CHAPTER III.
AMATEUR CHEMISTS.
In order to understand chemistry they procured Regnault's course oflectures, and were, in the first place, informed that "simple bodies areperhaps compound." They are divided into metalloids and metals--adifference in which, the author observes, there is "nothing absolute."So with acids and bases, "a body being able to behave in the manner ofacids or of bases, according to circumstances."
The notation appeared to them irregular. The multiple proportionsperplexed Pecuchet.
"Since one molecule of _a_, I suppose, is combined with severalparticles of _b_, it seems to me that this molecule ought to be dividedinto as many particles; but, if it is divided, it ceases to be unity,the primordial molecule. In short, I do not understand."
"No more do I," said Bouvard.
And they had recourse to a work less difficult, that of Girardin, fromwhich they acquired the certainty that ten litres of air weigh a hundredgrammes, that lead does not go into pencils, and that the diamond isonly carbon.
What amazed them above all is that the earth, as an element, does notexist.
They grasped the working of straw, gold, silver, the lye-washing oflinen, the tinning of saucepans; then, without the least scruple,Bouvard and Pecuchet launched into organic chemistry.
What a marvel to find again in living beings the same substances ofwhich the minerals are composed! Nevertheless they experienced a sort ofhumiliation at the idea that their own personality contained phosphorus,like matches; albumen, like the whites of eggs; and hydrogen gas, likestreet-lamps.
After colours and oily substances came the turn of fermentation. Thisbrought them to acids--and the law of equivalents once more confusedthem. They tried to elucidate it by means of the atomic theory, whichfairly swamped them.
In Bouvard's opinion instruments would have been necessary to understandall this. The expense was very great, and they had incurred too muchalready. But, no doubt, Dr. Vaucorbeil could enlighten them.
They presented themselves during his consultation hours.
"I hear you, gentlemen. What is your ailment?"
Pecuchet replied that they were not patients, and, having stated theobject of their visit:
"We want to understand, in the first place, the higher atomicity."
The physician got very red, then blamed them for being desirous to learnchemistry.
"I am not denying its importance, you may be sure; but really they areshoving it in everywhere! It exercises a deplorable influence onmedicine."
And the authority of his language was strengthened by the appearance ofhis surroundings. Over the chimney-piece trailed some diachylum andstrips for binding. In the middle of the desk stood the surgical case. Abasin in a corner was full of probes, and close to the wall there was arepresentation of a human figure deprived of the skin.
Pecuchet complimented the doctor on it.
"It must be a lovely study, anatomy."
M. Vaucorbeil expatiated on the fascination he had formerly found indissections; and Bouvard inquired what were the analogies between theinterior of a woman and that of a man.
In order to satisfy him, the doctor fetched from his library acollection of anatomical plates.
"Take them with you! You can look at them more at your ease in your ownhouse."
The skeleton astonished them by the prominence of the jawbone, the holesfor the eyes, and the frightful length of the hands.
They stood in need of an explanatory work. They returned to M.Vaucorbeil's residence, and, thanks to the manual of Alexander Lauth,they learned the divisions of the frame, wondering at the backbone,sixteen times stronger, it is said, than if the Creator had made itstraight (why sixteen times exactly?). The metacarpals drove Bouvardcrazy; and Pecuchet, who was in a desperate state over the cranium, lostcourage before the sphenoid, although it resembles a Turkish or"Turkesque" saddle.
As for the articulations, they were hidden under too many ligaments; sothey attacked the muscles. But the insertions were not easilydiscovered; and when they came to the vertebral grooves they gave it upcompletely.
Then Pecuchet said:
"If we took up chemistry again, would not this be only utilising thelaboratory?"
Bouvard protested, and he thought he had a recollection of artificialcorpses being manufactured according to the custom of hot countries.
Barberou, with whom he communicated, gave him some information about thematter. For ten francs a month they could have one of the manikins of M.Auzoux; and the following week the carrier from Falaise deposited beforetheir gate an oblong box.
Full of emotion, they carried it into the bakehouse. When the boardswere unfastened, the straw fell down, the silver paper slipped off, andthe anatomical figure made its appearance.
It was brick-coloured, without hair or skin, and variegated withinnumerable strings, red, blue, and white. It did not look like acorpse, but rather like a kind of plaything, very ugly, very clean, andsmelling of varnish.
They next took off the thorax; and they perceived the two lungs, like apair of sponges, the heart like a big egg, slightly sidewise behind thediaphragm, the kidneys, the entire bundle of entrails.
"To work!" said Pecuchet. The day and the evening were spent at it. Theyhad put blouses on, just as medical students do in the dissecting-rooms;and, by the light of three candles, they were working at their pieces ofpasteboard, when a fist knocked at the door.
"Open!"
It was M. Foureau, followed by the keeper.
Germaine's masters were pleased to show him the manikin. She had rushedimmediately to the grocer's shop to tell the thing, and the wholevillage now imagined that they had a real corpse concealed in theirhouse. Foureau, yielding to the public clamour, had come to make sureabout the fact. A number of persons, anxious for information, stoodoutside the porch.
When he entered, the manikin was lying on its side, and the muscles ofthe face, having been loosened, caused a monstrous protrusion, andlooked frightful.
"What brings you here?" said Pecuchet.
Foureau stammered: "Nothing, nothing at all." And, taking up one of thepieces from the table, "What is this?"
"The buccinator," replied Bouvard.
Foureau said nothing, but smiled in a sly fashion, jealous of theirhaving an amusement which he could not afford.
The two anatomists pretended to be pursuing their investigations. Thepeople outside, getting bored with waiting, made their way into thebakehouse, and, as they began pushing one another a little, the tableshook.
"Ah! this is too annoying," exclaimed Pecuchet. "Let us be rid of thepublic!"
The keeper made the busybodies take themselves off.
"Very well," said Bouvard; "we don't want anyone."
Foureau understood the allusion, and put it to them whether, not beingmedical men, they had the right to keep such an object in theirpossession. However, he was going to write to the prefect.
What a country district it was! There could be nothing more foolish,barbarous, and retrograde. The comparison which they instituted betweenthemselves and the others consoled them--they felt a longing to sufferin the cause of science.
The doctor, too, came to see them. He disparaged the model as too farremoved from nature, but took advantage of the occasion to give them alecture.
Bouvard and Pecuchet were delighted; and at their request M. Vaucorbeillent them several volumes out of his library, declaring at the same timethat they would not reach the end of them. They took note of the casesof childbirth, longevity, obesity, and extraordinary constipation givenin the _Dictionary of Medical Sciences_. Would that they had known thefamous Canadian, De Beaumont, the polyphagi, Tarare and Bijou, thedropsical woman from the department of Eure, the Piedmontese who wentevery twenty days to the water-closet, Simon de Mirepoix, who wasossified at the time of his death, and that ancient mayor of Angoulemewhose nose weighed three pounds!
The brain inspired them with philosophic reflections. They easilydistinguished in the interior o
f it the _septum lucidum_, composed oftwo lamellae, and the pineal gland, which is like a little red pea. Butthere were peduncles and ventricles, arches, columns, strata, ganglions,and fibres of all kinds, and the foramen of Pacchioni and the "body" ofPaccini; in short, an inextricable mass of details, enough to wear theirlives out.
Sometimes, in a fit of dizziness, they would take the figure completelyto pieces, then would get perplexed about putting back each part in itsproper place. This was troublesome work, especially after breakfast,and it was not long before they were both asleep, Bouvard with droopingchin and protruding stomach, and Pecuchet with his hands over his headand both elbows on the table.
Often at that moment M. Vaucorbeil, having finished his morning rounds,would open the door.
"Well, comrades, how goes anatomy?"
"Splendidly," they would answer.
Then he would put questions to them, for the pleasure of confusing them.
When they were tired of one organ they went on to another, in this waytaking up and then throwing aside the heart, the stomach, the ear, theintestines; for the pasteboard manikin bored them to death, despitetheir efforts to become interested in him. At last the doctor came onthem suddenly, just as they were nailing him up again in his box.
"Bravo! I expected that."
At their age they could not undertake such studies; and the smile thataccompanied these words wounded them deeply.
What right had he to consider them incapable? Did science belong to thisgentleman, as if he were himself a very superior personage? Then,accepting his challenge, they went all the way to Bayeux to purchasebooks there. What they required was physiology, and a second-handbookseller procured for them the treatises of Richerand and Adelon,celebrated at the period.
All the commonplaces as to ages, sexes, and temperaments appeared tothem of the highest importance. They were much pleased to learn thatthere are in the tartar of the teeth three kinds of animalcules, thatthe seat of taste is in the tongue, and the sensation of hunger in thestomach.
In order to grasp its functions better, they regretted that they had notthe faculty of ruminating, as Montegre, M. Gosse, and the brother ofGerard had; and they masticated slowly, reduced the food to pulp, andinsalivated it, accompanying in thought the alimentary mass passing intotheir intestines, and following it with methodical scrupulosity and analmost religious attention to its final consequences.
In order to produce digestion artificially, they piled up meat in abottle, in which was the gastric juice of a duck, and they carried itunder their armpits for a fortnight, without any other result savemaking their persons smell unpleasantly. You might have seen themrunning along the high-road in wet clothes under a burning sun. This wasfor the purpose of determining whether thirst is quenched by theapplication of water to the epidermis. They came back out of breath,both of them having caught cold.
Experiments in hearing, speech, and vision were then made in a livelyfashion; but Bouvard made a show-off on the subject of generation.
Pecuchet's reserve with regard to this question had always surprisedhim. His friend's ignorance appeared to him so complete that Bouvardpressed him for an explanation, and Pecuchet, colouring, ended by makingan avowal.
Some rascals had on one occasion dragged him into a house of ill-fame,from which he made his escape, preserving himself for the woman whom hemight fall in love with some day. A fortunate opportunity had never cometo him, so that, what with bashfulness, limited means, obstinacy, theforce of custom, at fifty-two years, and in spite of his residence inthe capital, he still possessed his virginity.
Bouvard found difficulty in believing it; then he laughed hugely, butstopped on perceiving tears in Pecuchet's eyes--for he had not beenwithout attachments, having by turns been smitten by a rope-dancer, thesister-in-law of an architect, a bar-maid, and a young washerwoman; andthe marriage had even been arranged when he had discovered that she was_enceinte_ by another man.
Bouvard said to him:
"There is always a way to make up for lost time. Come--no sadness! Iwill take it on myself, if you like."
Pecuchet answered, with a sigh, that he need not think any more aboutit; and they went on with their physiology.
Is it true that the surfaces of our bodies are always letting out asubtle vapour? The proof of it is that the weight of a man is decreasingevery minute. If each day what is wanting is added and what is excessivesubtracted, the health would be kept in perfect equilibrium. Sanctorius,the discoverer of this law, spent half a century weighing his food everyday together with its excretions, and took the weights himself, givinghimself no rest, save for the purpose of writing down his computations.
They tried to imitate Sanctorius; but, as their scales could not bearthe weight of both of them, it was Pecuchet who began.
He took his clothes off, in order not to impede the perspiration, and hestood on the platform of the scales perfectly naked, exposing to view,in spite of his modesty, his unusually long torso, resembling acylinder, together with his short legs and his brown skin. Beside him,on his chair, his friend read for him:
"'Learned men maintain that animal heat is developed by the contractionsof the muscles, and that it is possible by moving the thorax and thepelvic regions to raise the temperature of a warm bath.'"
Bouvard went to look for their bathing-tub, and, when everything wasready, plunged into it, provided with a thermometer. The wreckage of thedistillery, swept towards the end of the room, presented in the shadowthe indistinct outlines of a hillock. Every now and then they could hearthe mice nibbling; there was a stale odour of aromatic plants, andfinding it rather agreeable, they chatted serenely.
However, Bouvard felt a little cool.
"Move your members about!" said Pecuchet.
He moved them, without at all changing with the thermometer. "'Tisdecidedly cold."
"I am not hot either," returned Pecuchet, himself seized with a fit ofshivering. "But move about your pelvic regions--move them about!"
Bouvard spread open his thighs, wriggled his sides, balanced hisstomach, puffed like a whale, then looked at the thermometer, which wasalways falling.
"I don't understand this at all! Anyhow, I am stirring myself!"
"Not enough!"
And he continued his gymnastics.
This had gone on for three hours when once more he grasped the tube.
"What! twelve degrees! Oh, good-night! I'm off to bed!"
A dog came in, half mastiff, half hound, mangy, with yellowish hair andlolling tongue.
What were they to do? There was no bell, and their housekeeper was deaf.They were quaking, but did not venture to budge, for fear of beingbitten.
Pecuchet thought it a good idea to hurl threats at him, and at the sametime to roll his eyes about.
Then the dog began to bark; and he jumped about the scales, in whichPecuchet, by clinging on to the cords and bending his knees, tried toraise himself up as high as ever he could.
"You're getting your death of cold up there!" said Bouvard; and he beganmaking smiling faces at the dog, while pretending to give him things.
The dog, no doubt, understood these advances. Bouvard went so far as tocaress him, stuck the animal's paws on his shoulders, and rubbed themwith his finger-nails.
"Hollo! look here! there, he's off with my breeches!"
The dog cuddled himself upon them, and lay quiet.
At last, with the utmost precautions, they ventured the one to come downfrom the platform of the scales, and the other to get out of thebathing-tub; and when Pecuchet had got his clothes on again, he gavevent to this exclamation:
"You, my good fellow, will be of use for our experiments."
What experiments? They might inject phosphorus into him, and then shuthim up in a cellar, in order to see whether he would emit fire throughthe nostrils.
But how were they to inject it? and furthermore, they could not getanyone to sell them phosphorus.
They thought of putting him under a pneumatic bell, of making him i
nhalegas, and of giving him poison to drink. All this, perhaps, would not befunny! Eventually, they thought the best thing they could do was toapply a steel magnet to his spinal marrow.
Bouvard, repressing his emotion, handed some needles on a plate toPecuchet, who fixed them against the vertebrae. They broke, slipped, andfell on the ground. He took others, and quickly applied them at random.The dog burst his bonds, passed like a cannon-ball through the window,ran across the yard to the vestibule, and presented himself in thekitchen.
Germaine screamed when she saw him soaked with blood, and with twineround his paws.
Her masters, who had followed him, came in at the same moment. He madeone spring and disappeared.
The old servant turned on them.
"This is another of your tomfooleries, I'm sure! And my kitchen, too!It's nice! This perhaps will drive him mad! People are in jail who arenot as bad as you!"
They got back to the laboratory in order to examine the magneticneedles.
Not one of them had the least particle of the filings drawn off.
Then Germaine's assumption made them uneasy. He might get rabies, comeback unawares, and make a dash at them.
Next day they went making inquiries everywhere, and for many years theyturned up a by-path whenever they saw in the open country a dog at allresembling this one.
Their other experiments were unsuccessful. Contrary to the statements inthe text-books, the pigeons which they bled, whether their stomachs werefull or empty, died in the same space of time. Kittens sunk under waterperished at the end of five minutes; and a goose, which they had stuffedwith madder, presented periostea that were perfectly white.
The question of nutrition puzzled them.
How did it happen that the same juice is produced by bones, blood,lymph, and excrementitious materials? But one cannot follow themetamorphoses of an article of food. The man who uses only one of themis chemically equal to him who absorbs several. Vauquelin, having made acalculation of all the lime contained in the oats given as food to ahen, found a greater quantity of it in the shells of her eggs. So, then,a creation of substance takes place. In what way? Nothing is known aboutit.
It is not even known what is the strength of the heart. Borelli says itis what is necessary for lifting a weight of one hundred and eightythousand pounds, while Kiell estimates it at about eight ounces; andfrom this they drew the conclusion that physiology is--as a well-wornphrase expresses it--the romance of medicine. As they were unable tounderstand it, they did not believe in it.
A month slipped away in doing nothing. Then they thought of theirgarden. The dead tree, displayed in the middle of it, was annoying, andaccordingly, they squared it. This exercise fatigued them. Bouvard veryoften found it necessary to get the blacksmith to put his tools inorder.
One day, as he was making his way to the forge, he was accosted by a mancarrying a canvas bag on his back, who offered to sell him almanacs,pious books, holy medals, and lastly, the _Health Manual_ of FrancoisRaspail.[5]
This little book pleased him so much that he wrote to Barberou to sendhim the large work. Barberou sent it on, and in his letter mentioned anapothecary's shop for the prescriptions given in the work.
The simplicity of the doctrine charmed them. All diseases proceed fromworms. They spoil the teeth, make the lungs hollow, enlarge the liver,ravage the intestines, and cause noises therein. The best thing forgetting rid of them is camphor. Bouvard and Pecuchet adopted it. Theytook it in snuff, they chewed it and distributed it in cigarettes, inbottles of sedative water and pills of aloes. They even undertook thecare of a hunchback. It was a child whom they had come across onefair-day. His mother, a beggar woman, brought him to them every morning.They rubbed his hump with camphorated grease, placed there for twentyminutes a mustard poultice, then covered it over with diachylum, and, inorder to make sure of his coming back, gave him his breakfast.
As his mind was fixed on intestinal worms, Pecuchet noticed a singularspot on Madame Bordin's cheek. The doctor had for a long time beentreating it with bitters. Round at first as a twenty-sou piece, thisspot had enlarged and formed a red circle. They offered to cure it forher. She consented, but made it a condition that the ointment should beapplied by Bouvard. She took a seat before the window, unfastened theupper portion of her corset, and remained with her cheek turned up,looking at him with a glance of her eye which would have been dangerouswere it not for Pecuchet's presence. In the prescribed doses, and inspite of the horror felt with regard to mercury, they administeredcalomel. One month afterwards Madame Bordin was cured. She became apropagandist in their behalf, and the tax-collector, the mayor'ssecretary, the mayor himself, and everybody in Chavignolles suckedcamphor by the aid of quills.
However, the hunchback did not get straight; the collector gave up hiscigarette; it stopped up his chest twice as much. Foureau madecomplaints that the pills of aloes gave him hemorrhoids. Bouvard got astomachache, and Pecuchet fearful headaches. They lost confidence inRaspail, but took care to say nothing about it, fearing that they mightlessen their own importance.
They now exhibited great zeal about vaccine, learned how to bleed peopleover cabbage leaves, and even purchased a pair of lancets.
They accompanied the doctor to the houses of the poor, and thenconsulted their books. The symptoms noticed by the writers were notthose which they had just observed. As for the names of diseases, theywere Latin, Greek, French--a medley of every language. They are to becounted by thousands; and Linnaeus's system of classification, with itsgenera and its species, is exceedingly convenient; but how was thespecies to be fixed? Then they got lost in the philosophy of medicine.They raved about the life-principle of Van Helmont, vitalism, Brownism,organicism, inquired of the doctor whence comes the germ of scrofula,towards what point the infectious miasma inclines, and the means in allcases of disease to distinguish the cause from its effects.
"The cause and the effect are entangled in one another," repliedVaucorbeil.
His want of logic disgusted them--and they went by themselves to visitthe sick, making their way into the houses on the pretext ofphilanthropy. At the further end of rooms, on dirty mattresses, laypersons with faces hanging on one side, others who had them swollen orscarlet, or lemon-coloured, or very violet-hued, with pinched nostrils,trembling mouths, rattlings in the throat, hiccoughs, perspirations, andemissions like leather or stale cheese.
They read the prescriptions of their physicians, and were surprised atthe fact that anodynes are sometimes excitants, and emetics purgatives,that the same remedy suits different ailments, and that a malady maydisappear under opposite systems of treatment.
Nevertheless, they gave advice, got on the moral hobby again, and hadthe assurance to auscultate. Their imagination began to ferment. Theywrote to the king, in order that there might be established in Calvadosan institute of nurses for the sick, of which they would be theprofessors.
They would go to the apothecary at Bayeux (the one at Falaise had alwaysa grudge against them on account of the jujube affair), and they gavehim directions to manufacture, like the ancients, _pila purgatoria_,that is to say, medicaments in the shape of pellets, which, by dint ofhandling, become absorbed in the individual.
In accordance with the theory that by diminishing the heat we impede thewatery humours, they suspended in her armchair to the beams of theceiling a woman suffering from meningitis, and they were swinging herwith all their force when the husband, coming on the scene, kicked themout. Finally, they scandalised the cure thoroughly by introducing thenew fashion of thermometers in the rectum.
Typhoid fever broke out in the neighbourhood. Bouvard declared that hewould not have anything to do with it. But the wife of Gouy, theirfarmer, came groaning to them. Her man was a fortnight sick, and M.Vaucorbeil was neglecting him. Pecuchet devoted himself to the case.
Lenticular spots on the chest, pains in the joints, stomach distended,tongue red, these were all symptoms of dothienenteritis. Recalling thestatement of Raspail that by taking away the regulation o
f diet thefever may be suppressed, he ordered broth and a little meat.
The doctor suddenly made his appearance. His patient was on the point ofeating, with two pillows behind his back, between his wife and Pecuchet,who were sustaining him. He drew near the bed, and flung the plate outthrough the window, exclaiming:
"This is a veritable murder!"
"Why?"
"You perforate the intestine, since typhoid fever is an alteration ofits follicular membrane."
"Not always!"
And a dispute ensued as to the nature of fevers. Pecuchet believed thatthey were essential in themselves; Vaucorbeil made them dependent on ourbodily organs.
"Therefore, I remove everything that might excite them excessively."
"But regimen weakens the vital principle."
"What twaddle are you talking with your vital principle? What is it? Whohas seen it?"
Pecuchet got confused.
"Besides," said the physician, "Gouy does not want food."
The patient made a gesture of assent under his cotton nightcap.
"No matter, he requires it!"
"Not a bit! his pulse is at ninety-eight!"
"What matters about his pulse?" And Pecuchet proceeded to giveauthorities.
"Let systems alone!" said the doctor.
Pecuchet folded his arms. "So then, you are an empiric?"
"By no means; but by observing----"
"But if one observes badly?"
Vaucorbeil took this phrase for an allusion to Madame Bordin's skineruption--a story about which the widow had made a great outcry, and therecollection of which irritated him.
"To start with, it is necessary to have practised."
"Those who revolutionised the science did not practise--Van Helmont,Boerhaave, Broussais himself."
Without replying, Vaucorbeil stooped towards Gouy, and raising hisvoice:
"Which of us two do you select as your doctor?"
MUTUALLY BECOMING AFFLICTED, THEY LOOKED AT THEIRTONGUES]
The patient, who was falling asleep, perceived angry faces, and began toblubber. His wife did not know either what answer to make, for the onewas clever, but the other had perhaps a secret.
"Very well," said Vaucorbeil, "since you hesitate between a manfurnished with a diploma----"
Pecuchet sneered.
"Why do you laugh?"
"Because a diploma is not always an argument."
The doctor saw himself attacked in his means of livelihood, in hisprerogative, in his social importance. His wrath gave itself full vent.
"We shall see that when you are brought up before the courts forillegally practising medicine!" Then, turning round to the farmer'swife, "Get him killed by this gentleman at your ease, and I'm hanged ifever I come back to your house!"
And he dashed past the beech trees, shaking his walking-stick as hewent.
When Pecuchet returned, Bouvard was himself in a very excited state. Hehad just had a visit from Foureau, who was exasperated about hishemorrhoids. Vainly had he contended that they were a safeguard againstevery disease. Foureau, who would listen to nothing, had threatened himwith an action for damages. He lost his head over it.
Pecuchet told him the other story, which he considered more serious, andwas a little shocked at Bouvard's indifference.
Gouy, next day, had a pain in his abdomen. This might be due to theingestion of the food. Perhaps Vaucorbeil was not mistaken. A physician,after all, ought to have some knowledge of this! And a feeling ofremorse took possession of Pecuchet! He was afraid lest he might turnout a homicide.
For prudence' sake they sent the hunchback away. But his mother cried agreat deal at his losing the breakfast, not to speak of the inflictionof having made them come every day from Barneval to Chavignolles.
Foureau calmed down, and Gouy recovered his strength. At the presentmoment the cure was certain. A success like this emboldened Pecuchet.
"If we studied obstetrics with the aid of one of these manikins----"
"Enough of manikins!"
"There are half-bodies made with skin invented for the use of studentsof midwifery. It seems to me that I could turn over the foetus!"
But Bouvard was tired of medicine.
"The springs of life are hidden from us, the ailments too numerous, theremedies problematical. No reasonable definitions are to be found in theauthors of health, disease, diathesis, or even pus."
However, all this reading had disturbed their brains.
Bouvard, whenever he caught a cold, imagined he was getting inflammationof the lungs. When leeches did not abate a stitch in the side, he hadrecourse to a blister, whose action affected the kidneys. Then hefancied he had an attack of stone.
Pecuchet caught lumbago while lopping the elm trees, and vomited afterhis dinner--a circumstance which frightened him very much. Then,noticing that his colour was rather yellow, suspected a liver complaint,and asked himself, "Have I pains?" and ended by having them.
Mutually becoming afflicted, they looked at their tongues, felt eachother's pulses, made a change as to the use of mineral waters, purgedthemselves--and dreaded cold, heat, wind, rain, flies, and principallycurrents of air.
Pecuchet imagined that taking snuff was fatal. Besides, sneezingsometimes causes the rupture of an aneurism; and so he gave up thesnuff-box altogether. From force of habit he would thrust his fingersinto it, then suddenly become conscious of his imprudence.
As black coffee shakes the nerves, Bouvard wished to give up his halfcup; but he used to fall asleep after his meals, and was afraid when hewoke up, for prolonged sleep is a foreboding of apoplexy.
Their ideal was Cornaro, that Venetian gentleman who by the regulationof his diet attained to an extreme old age. Without actually imitatinghim, they might take the same precautions; and Pecuchet took down fromhis bookshelves a _Manual of Hygiene_ by Doctor Morin.
"How had they managed to live till now?"
Their favourite dishes were there prohibited. Germaine, in a state ofperplexity, did not know any longer what to serve up to them.
Every kind of meat had its inconveniences. Puddings and sausages, redherrings, lobsters, and game are "refractory." The bigger a fish is, themore gelatine it contains, and consequently the heavier it is.Vegetables cause acidity, macaroni makes people dream; cheeses,"considered generally, are difficult of digestion." A glass of water inthe morning is "dangerous." Everything you eat or drink beingaccompanied by a similar warning, or rather by these words: "Bad!""Beware of the abuse of it!" "Does not suit everyone!" Why bad? Whereinis the abuse of it? How are you to know whether a thing like this suitsyou?
What a problem was that of breakfast! They gave up coffee and milk onaccount of its detestable reputation, and, after that, chocolate, for itis "a mass of indigestible substances." There remained, then, tea. But"nervous persons ought to forbid themselves the use of it completely."Yet Decker, in the seventeenth century, prescribed twenty decalitres[6]of it a day, in order to cleanse the spongy parts of the pancreas.
This direction shook Morin in their estimation, the more so as hecondemns every kind of head-dress, hats, women's caps, and men's caps--arequirement which was revolting to Pecuchet.
Then they purchased Becquerel's treatise, in which they saw that pork isin itself "a good aliment," tobacco "perfectly harmless in itscharacter," and coffee "indispensable to military men."
Up to that time they had believed in the unhealthiness of damp places.Not at all! Casper declares them less deadly than others. One does notbathe in the sea without refreshing one's skin. Begin advises people tocast themselves into it while they are perspiring freely. Wine takenneat after soup is considered excellent for the stomach; Levy lays theblame on it of impairing the teeth. Lastly, the flannel waistcoat--thatsafeguard, that preserver of health, that palladium cherished by Bouvardand inherent to Pecuchet, without any evasions or fear of the opinionsof others--is considered unsuitable by some authors for men of aplethoric and sanguine temperament!
What, then, is hygien
e? "Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error onthe other side," M. Levy asserts; and Becquerel adds that it is not ascience.
So then they ordered for their dinner oysters, a duck, pork and cabbage,cream, a Pont l'Eveque cheese, and a bottle of Burgundy. It was anenfranchisement, almost a revenge; and they laughed at Cornaro! It wasonly an imbecile that could be tyrannised over as he had been! Whatvileness to be always thinking about prolonging one's existence! Life isgood only on the condition that it is enjoyed.
"Another piece?"
"Yes, I will."
"So will I."
"Your health."
"Yours."
"And let us laugh at the rest of the world."
They became elated. Bouvard announced that he wanted three cups ofcoffee, though he was not a military man. Pecuchet, with his cap overhis ears, took pinch after pinch, and sneezed without fear; and, feelingthe need of a little champagne, they ordered Germaine to go at once tothe wine-shop to buy a bottle of it. The village was too far away; sherefused. Pecuchet got indignant:
"I command you--understand!--I command you to hurry off there."
She obeyed, but, grumbling, resolved soon to have done with her masters;they were so incomprehensible and fantastic.
Then, as in former days, they went to drink their coffee and brandy onthe hillock.
The harvest was just over, and the stacks in the middle of the fieldsrose in dark heaps against the tender blue of a calm night. Nothing wasastir about the farms. Even the crickets were no longer heard. Thefields were all wrapped in sleep.
The pair digested while they inhaled the breeze which blew refreshinglyagainst their cheeks.
Above, the sky was covered with stars; some shone in clusters, others ina row, or rather alone, at certain distances from each other. A zone ofluminous dust, extending from north to south, bifurcated above theirheads. Amid these splendours there were vast empty spaces, and thefirmament seemed a sea of azure with archipelagoes and islets.
"What a quantity!" exclaimed Bouvard.
"We do not see all," replied Pecuchet. "Behind the Milky Way are thenebulae, and behind the nebulae, stars still; the most distant isseparated from us by three millions of myriametres."[7]
He had often looked into the telescope of the Place Vendome, and herecalled the figures.
"The sun is a million times bigger than the earth; Sirius is twelvetimes the size of the sun; comets measure thirty-four millions ofleagues."
"'Tis enough to make one crazy!" said Bouvard.
He lamented his ignorance, and even regretted that he had not been inhis youth at the Polytechnic School.
Then Pecuchet, turning him in the direction of the Great Bear, showedhim the polar star; then Cassiopeia, whose constellation forms a Y;Vega, of the Lyra constellation--all scintillating; and at the lowerpart of the horizon, the red Aldebaran.
Bouvard, with his head thrown back, followed with difficulty the angles,quadrilaterals, and pentagons, which it is necessary to imagine in orderto make yourself at home in the sky.
Pecuchet went on:
"The swiftness of light is eighty thousand leagues a second; one ray ofthe Milky Way takes six centuries to reach us; so that a star at themoment we observe it may have disappeared. Several are intermittent;others never come back; and they change positions. Every one of them isin motion; every one of them is passing on."
"However, the sun is motionless."
"It was believed to be so formerly. But to-day men of science declarethat it rushes towards the constellation of Hercules!"
This put Bouvard's ideas out of order--and, after a minute's reflection:
"Science is constructed according to the data furnished by a corner ofspace. Perhaps it does not agree with all the rest that we are ignorantof, which is much vaster, and which we cannot discover."
So they talked, standing on the hillock, in the light of the stars; andtheir conversation was interrupted by long intervals of silence.
At last they asked one another whether there were men in the stars. Whynot? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought tobe gigantic, those of Mars of middle stature, those of Venus very small.Unless it should be everywhere the same thing. There are merchants upthere, and gendarmes; they trade there; they fight there; they dethronekings there.
Some shooting stars slipped suddenly, describing on the sky, as it were,the parabola of an enormous rocket.
"Stop!" said Bouvard; "here are vanishing worlds."
Pecuchet replied:
"If ours, in its turn, kicks the bucket, the citizens of the stars willnot be more moved than we are now. Ideas like this may pull down yourpride."
"What is the object of all this?"
"Perhaps it has no object."
"However----" And Pecuchet repeated two or three times "however,"without finding anything more to say.
"No matter. I should very much like to know how the universe is made."
"That should be in Buffon," returned Bouvard, whose eyes were closing.
"I am not equal to any more of it. I am going to bed."
The _Epoques de la Nature_ informed them that a comet by knockingagainst the sun had detached one portion of it, which became the earth.First, the poles had cooled; all the waters had enveloped the globe;they subsided into the caverns; then the continents separated from eachother, and the beasts and man appeared.
The majesty of creation engendered in them an amazement infinite asitself. Their heads got enlarged. They were proud of reflecting on suchlofty themes.
The minerals ere long proved wearisome to them, and for distraction theysought refuge in the _Harmonies_ of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
Vegetable and terrestrial harmonies, aerial, aquatic, human, fraternal,and even conjugal--every one of them is here dealt with, not omittingthe invocations to Venus, to the Zephyrs, and to the Loves. Theyexhibited astonishment at fishes having fins, birds wings, seeds anenvelope; full of that philosophy which discovers virtuous intentions inNature, and regards her as a kind of St. Vincent de Paul, alwaysoccupied in performing acts of benevolence.
Then they wondered at her prodigies, the water-spouts, the volcanoes,the virgin forests; and they bought M. Depping's work on the _Marvelsand Beauties of Nature in France_. Cantal possesses three of them,Herault five, Burgundy two--no more, while Dauphine reckons for itselfalone up to fifteen marvels. But soon we shall find no more of them. Thegrottoes with stalactites are stopped up; the burning mountains areextinguished; the natural ice-houses have become heated; and the oldtrees in which they said mass are falling under the leveller's axe, orare on the point of dying.
Their curiosity next turned towards the beasts.
They re-opened their Buffon, and got into ecstasies over the strangetastes of certain animals.
But all the books are not worth one personal observation. They hurriedout into the farmyard, and asked the labourers whether they had seenbulls consorting with mares, hogs seeking after cows, and the males ofpartridges doing strange things among themselves.
"Never in their lives." They thought such questions even a little queerfor gentlemen of their age.
They took a fancy to try abnormal unions. The least difficult is that ofthe he-goat and the ewe. Their farmer had not a he-goat in hispossession; a neighbour lent his, and, as it was the period of rutting,they shut the two beasts up in the press, concealing themselves behindthe casks in order that the event might be quietly accomplished.
Each first ate a little heap of hay; then they ruminated; the ewe laydown, and she bleated continuously, while the he-goat, standing erect onhis crooked legs, with his big beard and his drooping ears, fixed on herhis eyes, which glittered in the shade.
At length, on the evening of the third day, they deemed it advisable toassist nature, but the goat, turning round on Pecuchet, hit him in thelower part of the stomach with his horns. The ewe, seized with fear,began turning about in the press as if in a riding-school. Bouvard ranafter her, threw himself on top of her to hold her, and fell on
theground with both hands full of wool.
They renewed their experiments on hens and a drake, on a mastiff and asow, in the hope that monsters might be the result, not understandinganything about the question of species.
This word denotes a group of individuals whose descendants reproducethemselves, but animals classed as of different species may possess thepower of reproduction, while others comprised in the same species havelost the capacity. They flattered themselves that they would obtainclear ideas on this subject by studying the development of germs; andPecuchet wrote to Dumouchel in order to get a microscope.
By turns they put on the glass surface hairs, tobacco, finger-nails, anda fly's claw, but they forgot the drop of water which is indispensable;at other times it was the little lamel, and they pushed each otherforward, and put the instrument out of order; then, when they saw only ahaze, they blamed the optician. They went so far as to have doubts aboutthe microscope. Perhaps the discoveries that have been attributed to itare not so certain?
Dumouchel, in sending on the invoice to them, begged of them to collecton his account some serpent-stones and sea-urchins, of which he hadalways been an admirer, and which were commonly found in countrydistricts. In order to interest them in geology he sent them the_Lettres_ of Bertrand with the _Discours_ of Cuvier on the revolutionsof the globe.
After the perusal of these two works they imagined the following stateof things:
First, an immense sheet of water, from which emerged promontoriesspeckled with lichens, and not one human being, not one sound. It was aworld silent, motionless, and bare; there long plants swayed to and froin a fog that resembled the vapour of a sweating-room. A red sunoverheated the humid atmosphere. Then volcanoes burst forth; the igneousrocks sent up mountains of liquid flame, and the paste of the streamingporphyry and basalt began to congeal. Third picture: in shallow seashave sprung up isles of madrepore; a cluster of palm trees overhangsthem here and there. There are shells like carriage wheels, tortoisesthree metres in length, lizards of sixty feet; amphibians stretch outamid the reeds their ostrich necks and crocodile jaws; winged serpentsfly about. Finally, on the large continents, huge mammifers make theirappearance, their limbs misshapen, like pieces of wood badly squared,their hides thicker than plates of bronze, or else shaggy,thick-lipped, with manes and crooked fangs. Flocks of mammoths browsedon the plains where, since, the Atlantic has been; the paleotherium,half horse, half tapir, overturned with his tumbling the ant-hills ofMontmartre; and the _cervus giganteus_ trembled under the chestnut treesat the growls of the bears of the caverns, who made the dog ofBeaugency, three times as big as a wolf, yelp in his den.
All these periods had been separated from one another by cataclysms, ofwhich the latest is our Deluge. It was like a drama of fairyland inseveral acts, with man for apotheosis.
They were astounded when they learned that there existed on stonesimprints of dragon-flies and birds' claws; and, having run through oneof the Roret manuals, they looked out for fossils.
One afternoon, as they were turning over some flints in the middle ofthe high-road, the cure passed, and, accosting them in a wheedling tone:
"These gentlemen are busying themselves with geology. Very good."
For he held this science in esteem. It confirmed the authority of theScriptures by proving the fact of the Deluge.
Bouvard talked about coprolites, which are animals' excrements in apetrified state.
The Abbe Jeufroy appeared surprised at the matter. After all, if it wereso, it was a reason the more for wondering at Providence.
Pecuchet confessed that, up to the present, their inquiries had not beenfruitful; and yet the environs of Falaise, like all Jurassic soils,should abound in remains of animals.
"I have been told," replied the Abbe Jeufroy, "that the jawbone of anelephant was at one time found at Villers."
However, one of his friends, M. Larsoneur, advocate, member of the barat Lisieux, and archaeologist, would probably supply them withinformation about it. He had written a history of Port-en-Bessin, inwhich the discovery of an alligator was noticed.
Bouvard and Pecuchet exchanged glances: the same hope took possession ofboth; and, in spite of the heat, they remained standing a long timequestioning the ecclesiastic, who sheltered himself from the sun under ablue cotton umbrella. The lower part of his face was rather heavy, andhis nose was pointed. He was perpetually smiling, or bent his head whilehe closed his eyelids.
The church-bell rang the Angelus.
"A very good evening, gentlemen! You will allow me, will you not?"
At his suggestion they waited three weeks for Larsoneur's reply. Atlength it arrived.
The name of the man who had dug up the tooth of the mastodon was LouisBloche. Details were wanting. As to his history, it was comprised in oneof the volumes of the Lisieux Academy, and he could not lend his owncopy, as he was afraid of spoiling the collection. With regard to thealligator, it had been discovered in the month of November, 1825, underthe cliff of the Hachettes of Sainte-Honorine, near Port-en-Bessin, inthe arrondissement of Bayeux. His compliments followed.
The obscurity that enshrouded the mastodon provoked in Pecuchet's mind alonging to search for it. He would fain have gone to Villers forthwith.
Bouvard objected that, to save themselves a possibly useless andcertainly expensive journey, it would be desirable to make inquiries. Sothey wrote a letter to the mayor of the district, in which they askedhim what had become of one Louis Bloche. On the assumption of his death,his descendants or collateral relations might be able to enlighten themas to his precious discovery, when he made it, and in what public placein the township this testimony of primitive times was deposited? Werethere any prospects of finding similar ones? What was the cost of a manand a car for a day?
And vainly did they make application to the deputy-mayor, and then tothe first municipal councillor. They received no news from Villers. Nodoubt the inhabitants were jealous about their fossils--unless they hadsold them to the English. The journey to the Hachettes was determinedupon.
Bouvard and Pecuchet took the public conveyance from Falaise to Caen.Then a covered car brought them from Caen to Bayeux; from Bayeux, theywalked to Port-en-Bessin.
They had not been deceived. There were curious stones alongside theHachettes; and, assisted by the directions of the innkeeper, theysucceeded in reaching the strand.
The tide was low. It exposed to view all its shingles, with a prairie ofsea-wrack as far as the edge of the waves. Grassy slopes cut the cliff,which was composed of soft brown earth that had hardened and become inits lower strata a rampart of greyish stone. Tiny streams of water keptflowing down incessantly, while in the distance the sea rumbled. Itseemed sometimes to suspend its throbbing, and then the only soundheard was the murmur of the little springs.
They staggered over the sticky soil, or rather they had to jump overholes.
Bouvard sat down on a mound overlooking the sea and contemplated thewaves, thinking of nothing, fascinated, inert. Pecuchet brought him overto the side of the cliff to show him a serpent-stone incrusted in therock, like a diamond in its gangue. It broke their nails; they wouldrequire instruments; besides, night was coming on. The sky was empurpledtowards the west, and the entire sea-shore was wrapped in shadow. In themidst of the blackish wrack the pools of water were growing wider. Thesea was coming towards them. It was time to go back.
Next day, at dawn, with a mattock and a pick, they made an attack ontheir fossil, whose covering cracked. It was an ammonite nodosus,corroded at the ends but weighing quite six pounds; and in hisenthusiasm Pecuchet exclaimed:
"We cannot do less than present it to Dumouchel!"
They next chanced upon sponges, lampshells, orks--but no alligator. Indefault of it, they were hoping to get the backbone of a hippopotamus oran ichthyosaurus, the bones of any animals whatever that werecontemporaneous with the Deluge, when they discovered against the cliff,at a man's height, outlines which assumed the form of a gigantic fish.
T
hey deliberated as to the means by which they could get possession ofit. Bouvard would extricate it at the top, while Pecuchet beneath woulddemolish the rock in order to make it descend gently without spoilingit.
Just as they were taking breath they saw above their heads acustom-house officer in a cloak, who was gesticulating with a commandingair.
"Well! What! Let us alone!" And they went on with their work, Bouvard onthe tips of his toes, trapping with his mattock, Pecuchet, with his backbent, digging with his pick.
But the custom-house officer reappeared farther down, in an open spacebetween the rocks, making repeated signals. They treated him withcontempt. An oval body bulged out under the thinned soil, and slopeddown, was on the point of slipping.
Suddenly another individual, with a sabre, presented himself.
"Your passports?"
It was the field-guard on his rounds, and, at the same instant, the manfrom the custom-house came up, having hastened through a ravine.
"Take them into custody for me, Pere Morin, or the cliff will fall in!"
"It is for a scientific object," replied Pecuchet.
Then a mass of stone fell, grazing them all four so closely that alittle more and they were dead men.
When the dust was scattered, they recognised the mast of a ship, whichcrumbled under the custom-house officer's boot.
Bouvard said with a sigh, "We did no great harm!"
"One should not do anything within the fortification limits," returnedthe guard.
"In the first place, who are you, in order that I may take out a summonsagainst you?"
Pecuchet refused to give his name, cried out against such injustice.
"Don't argue! follow me!"
As soon as they reached the port a crowd of ragamuffins ran after them.Bouvard, red as a poppy, put on an air of dignity; Pecuchet, exceedinglypale, darted furious looks around; and these two strangers, carryingstones in their pocket-handkerchiefs, did not present a good appearance.Provisionally, they put them up at the inn, whose master on thethreshold guarded the entrance. Then the mason came to demand back histools. They were paying him for them, and still there were incidentalexpenses!--and the field-guard did not come back! Wherefore? At last, agentleman, who wore the cross of the Legion of Honour, set them free,and they went away, after giving their Christian names, surnames, andtheir domicile, with an undertaking on their part to be more circumspectin future.
Besides a passport, they were in need of many things, and beforeundertaking fresh explorations they consulted the _GeologicalTraveller's Guide_, by Bone. It was necessary to have, in the firstplace, a good soldier's knapsack, then a surveyor's chain, a file, apair of nippers, a compass, and three hammers, passed into a belt, whichis hidden under the frock-coat, and "thus preserves you from thatoriginal appearance which one ought to avoid on a journey." As for thestick, Pecuchet freely adopted the tourist's stick, six feet high, witha long iron point. Bouvard preferred the walking-stick umbrella, ormany-branched umbrella, the knob of which is removed in order to claspon the silk, which is kept separately in a little bag. They did notforget strong shoes with gaiters, "two pairs of braces" each "on accountof perspiration," and, although one cannot present himself everywherein a cap, they shrank from the expense of "one of those folding hats,which bear the name of 'Gibus,' their inventor."
The same work gives precepts for conduct: "To know the language of thepart of the country you visit": they knew it. "To preserve a modestdeportment": this was their custom. "Not to have too much money aboutyou": nothing simpler. Finally, in order to spare yourselfembarrassments of all descriptions, it is a good thing to adopt the"description of engineer."
"Well, we will adopt it."
Thus prepared, they began their excursions; were sometimes eight daysaway, and passed their lives in the open air.
Sometimes they saw, on the banks of the Orne, in a rent, pieces of rockraising their slanting surfaces between some poplar trees and heather;or else they were grieved by meeting, for the entire length of the road,nothing but layers of clay. In the presence of a landscape they admiredneither the series of perspectives nor the depth of the backgrounds, northe undulations of the green surfaces; but that which was not visible tothem, the underpart, the earth: and for them every hill was only a freshproof of the Deluge.
To the Deluge mania succeeded that of erratic blocks. The big stonesalone in the fields must come from vanished glaciers, and they searchedfor moraines and faluns.
They were several times taken for pedlars on account of their equipage;and when they had answered that they were "engineers," a dread seizedthem--the usurpation of such a title might entail unpleasantconsequences.
At the end of each day they panted beneath the weight of theirspecimens; but they dauntlessly carried them off home with them. Theywere deposited on the doorsteps, on the stairs, in the bedrooms, in thedining-room, and in the kitchen; and Germaine used to make a hubbubabout the quantity of dust. It was no slight task, before pasting on thelabels, to know the names of the rocks; the variety of colours and ofgrain made them confuse argil and marl, granite and gneiss, quartz andlimestone.
And the nomenclature plagued them. Why Devonian, Cambrian, Jurassic--asif the portions of the earth designated by these names were not in otherplaces as well as in Devonshire, near Cambridge, and in the Jura? It wasimpossible to know where you are there. That which is a system for oneis for another a stratum, for a third a mere layer. The plates of thelayers get intermingled and entangled in one another; but Omaliusd'Halloy warns you not to believe in geological divisions.
This statement was a relief to them; and when they had seen corallimestones in the plain of Caen, phillades at Balleroy, kaolin at St.Blaise, and oolite everywhere, and searched for coal at Cartigny and formercury at Chapelle-en-Juger, near St. Lo, they decided on a longerexcursion: a journey to Havre, to study the fire-resisting quartz andthe clay of Kimmeridge.
As soon as they had stepped out of the packet-boat they asked what roadled under the lighthouses.
Landslips blocked up the way; it was dangerous to venture along it.
A man who let out vehicles accosted them, and offered them drives aroundthe neighbourhood--Ingouville, Octeville, Fecamp, Lillebonne, "Rome, ifit was necessary."
His charges were preposterous, but the name of Falaise had struck them.By turning off the main road a little, they could see Etretat, and theytook the coach that started from Fecamp to go to the farthest pointfirst.
In the vehicle Bouvard and Pecuchet had a conversation with threepeasants, two old women, and a seminarist, and did not hesitate to stylethemselves engineers.
They stopped in front of the bay. They gained the cliff, and fiveminutes after, rubbed up against it to avoid a big pool of water whichwas advancing like a gulf stream in the middle of the sea-shore. Thenthey saw an archway which opened above a deep grotto; it was sonorousand very bright, like a church, with descending columns and a carpet ofsea-wrack all along its stone flooring.
This work of nature astonished them, and as they went on their waycollecting shells, they started considerations as to the origin of theworld.
Bouvard inclined towards Neptunism; Pecuchet, on the contrary, was aPlutonist.
"The central fire had broken the crust of the globe, heaved up themasses of earth, and made fissures. It is, as it were, an interior sea,which has its flow and ebb, its tempests; a thin film separates us fromit. We could not sleep if we thought of all that is under our heels.However, the central fire diminishes, and the sun grows more feeble, somuch so that one day the earth will perish of refrigeration. It willbecome sterile; all the wood and all the coal will be converted intocarbonic acid, and no life can subsist there."
"We haven't come to that yet," said Bouvard.
"Let us expect it," returned Pecuchet.
No matter, this end of the world, far away as it might be, made themgloomy; and, side by side, they walked in silence over the shingles.
The cliff, perpendicular, a mass of white, striped with
black here andthere by lines of flint, stretched towards the horizon like the curve ofa rampart five leagues wide. An east wind, bitter and cold, was blowing;the sky was grey; the sea greenish and, as it were, swollen. From thehighest points of rocks birds took wing, wheeled round, and speedilyre-entered their hiding places. Sometimes a stone, getting loosened,would rebound from one place to another before reaching them.
Pecuchet continued his reflections aloud:
"Unless the earth should be destroyed by a cataclysm! We do not know thelength of our period. The central fire has only to overflow."
"However, it is diminishing."
"That does not prevent its explosions from having produced the JuliaIsland, Monte Nuovo, and many others."
Bouvard remembered having read these details in Bertrand.
"But such catastrophes do not happen in Europe."
"A thousand pardons! Witness that of Lisbon. As for our own countries,the coal-mines and the firestone useful for war are numerous, and mayvery well, when decomposing, form the mouths of volcanoes. Moreover,the volcanoes always burst near the sea."
Bouvard cast his eyes over the waves, and fancied he could distinguishin the distance a volume of smoke ascending to the sky.
"Since the Julia Island," returned Pecuchet, "has disappeared, thefragments of the earth formed by the same cause will perhaps have thesame fate. An islet in the Archipelago is as important as Normandy andeven as Europe."
Bouvard imagined Europe swallowed up in an abyss.
"Admit," said Pecuchet, "that an earthquake takes place under theBritish Channel: the waters rush into the Atlantic; the coasts of Franceand England, tottering on their bases, bend forward and reunite--andthere you are! The entire space between is wiped out."
Instead of answering, Bouvard began walking so quickly that he was soona hundred paces away from Pecuchet. Being alone, the idea of a cataclysmdisturbed him. He had eaten nothing since morning; his temples werethrobbing. All at once the soil appeared to him to be shaking, and thecliff over his head to be bending forward at its summit. At that momenta shower of gravel rolled down from the top of it. Pecuchet observed himscampering off wildly, understood his fright, and cried from a distance:
"Stop! stop! The period is not completed!"
And in order to overtake him he made enormous bounds with the aid of histourist's stick, all the while shouting out:
"The period is not completed! The period is not completed!"
Bouvard, in a mad state, kept running without stopping. Themany-branched umbrella fell down, the skirts of his coat were flying,the knapsack was tossing on his back. He was like a tortoise with wingsabout to gallop amongst the rocks. One bigger than the rest concealedhim from view.
Pecuchet reached the spot out of breath, saw nobody, then returned inorder to gain the fields through a defile, which Bouvard, no doubt, hadtaken.
This narrow ascent was cut by four great steps in the cliff, as lofty asthe heights of two men, and glittering like polished alabaster.
At an elevation of fifty feet Pecuchet wished to descend; but as the seawas dashing against him in front, he set about clambering up further. Atthe second turning, when he beheld the empty space, terror froze him. Ashe approached the third, his legs were becoming weak. Volumes of airvibrated around him, a cramp gripped his epigastrium; he sat down on theground, with eyes closed, no longer having consciousness of aught savethe beatings of his own heart, which were suffocating him; then he flunghis tourist's stick on the ground, and on his hands and knees resumedhis ascent. But the three hammers attached to his belt began to pressagainst his stomach; the stones with which he had crammed his pocketsknocked against his sides; the peak of his cap blinded him; the windincreased in violence. At length he reached the upper ground, and therefound Bouvard, who had ascended higher through a less difficult defile.A cart picked them up. They forgot all about Etretat.
The next evening, at Havre, while waiting for the packet-boat, they sawat the tail-end of a newspaper, a short scientific essay headed, "Onthe Teaching of Geology." This article, full of facts, explained thesubject as it was understood at the period.
"There has never been a complete cataclysm of the globe, but the same space has not always the same duration, and is exhausted more quickly in one place than in another. Lands of the same age contain different fossils, just as depositaries very far distant from each other enclose similar ones. The ferns of former times are identical with the ferns of to-day. Many contemporary zoophytes are found again in the most ancient layers. To sum up, actual modifications explain former convulsions. The same causes are always in operation; Nature does not proceed by leaps; and the periods, Brogniart asserts, are, after all, only abstractions."
Cuvier's work up to this time had appeared to them surrounded with theglory of an aureola at the summit of an incontestable science. It wassapped. Creation had no longer the same discipline, and their respectfor this great man diminished.
From biographies and extracts they learned something of the doctrines ofLamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
All that was contrary to accepted ideas, the authority of the Church.
Bouvard experienced relief as if from a broken yoke. "I should like tosee now what answer Citizen Jeufroy would make to me about the Deluge!"
They found him in his little garden, where he was awaiting the membersof the vestry, who were to meet presently with a view to the purchase ofa chasuble.
"These gentlemen wish for----?"
"An explanation, if you please."
And Bouvard began, "What means, in Genesis, 'The abyss which was brokenup,' and 'The cataracts of heaven?' For an abyss does not get brokenup, and heaven has no cataracts."
The abbe closed his eyelids, then replied that it was always necessaryto distinguish between the sense and the letter. Things which shock youat first, turn out right when they are sifted.
"Very well, but how do you explain the rain which passed over thehighest mountains--those that are two leagues in height. Just think ofit! Two leagues!--a depth of water that makes two leagues!"
And the mayor, coming up, added:
"Bless my soul! What a bath!"
"Admit," said Bouvard, "that Moses exaggerates like the devil."
The cure had read Bonald, and answered:
"I am ignorant of his motives; it was, no doubt, to inspire a salutaryfear in the people of whom he was the leader."
"Finally, this mass of water--where did it come from?"
"How do I know? The air was changed into water, just as happens everyday."
Through the garden gate they saw M. Girbal, superintendent of taxes,making his way in, together with Captain Heurtaux, a landowner; andBeljambe, the innkeeper, appeared, assisting with his arm Langlois, thegrocer, who walked with difficulty on account of his catarrh.
Pecuchet, without bestowing a thought on them, took up the argument:
"Excuse me, M. Jeufroy. The weight of the atmosphere, sciencedemonstrates to us, is equal to that of a mass of water which would makea covering of ten metres[8] around the globe. Consequently, if all theair that had been condensed fell down in a liquid state, it wouldaugment very little the mass of existing waters."
The vestrymen opened their eyes wide, and listened.
The cure lost patience. "Will you deny that shells have been found onthe mountains? What put them there, if not the Deluge? They are notaccustomed, I believe, to grow out of the ground of themselves alone,like carrots!" And this joke having made the assembly laugh, he added,pressing his lips together: "Unless this be another discovery ofscience!"
Bouvard was pleased to reply by referring to the rising of mountains,the theory of Elie de Beaumont.
"Don't know him," returned the abbe.
Foureau hastened to explain: "He is from Caen. I have seen him at thePrefecture."
"But if your Deluge," Bouvard broke in again, "had sent shells drifting,they would be found broken on the surface, and not at depths of thr
eehundred metres sometimes."
The priest fell back on the truth of the Scriptures, the tradition ofthe human race, and the animals discovered in the ice in Siberia.
"That does not prove that man existed at the time they did."
The earth, in Pecuchet's view, was much older. "The delta of theMississippi goes back to tens of thousands of years. The actual epochis a hundred thousand, at least. The lists of Manetho----"
The Count de Faverges appeared on the scene. They were all silent at hisapproach.
"Go on, pray. What were you talking about?"
"These gentlemen are wrangling with me," replied the abbe.
"About what?"
"About Holy Writ, M. le Comte."
Bouvard immediately pleaded that they had a right, as geologists, todiscuss religion.
"Take care," said the count; "you know the phrase, my dear sir, 'Alittle science takes us away from it, a great deal leads us back toit'?" And in a tone at the same time haughty and paternal: "Believe me,you will come back to it! you will come back to it!"
"Perhaps so. But what were we to think of a book in which it ispretended that the light was created before the sun? as if the sun werenot the sole cause of light!"
"You forget the light which we call boreal," said the ecclesiastic.
Bouvard, without answering this point, strongly denied that light couldbe on one side and darkness on the other, that evening and morning couldhave existed when there were no stars, or that the animals made theirappearance suddenly, instead of being formed by crystallisation.
As the walks were too narrow, while gesticulating, they trod on theflower-borders. Langlois took a fit of coughing.
The captain exclaimed: "You are revolutionaries!"
Girbal: "Peace! peace!"
The priest: "What materialism!"
Foureau: "Let us rather occupy ourselves with our chasuble!"
"No! let me speak!" And Bouvard, growing more heated, went on to saythat man was descended from the ape!
All the vestrymen looked at each other, much amazed, and as if to assurethemselves that they were not apes.
Bouvard went on: "By comparing the foetus of a woman, of a bitch, of abird, of a frog----"
"Enough!"
"For my part, I go farther!" cried Pecuchet. "Man is descended from thefishes!"
There was a burst of laughter. But without being disturbed:
"The _Telliamed_--an Arab book----"
"Come, gentlemen, let us hold our meeting."
And they entered the sacristy.
The two comrades had not given the Abbe Jeufroy such a fall as theyexpected; therefore, Pecuchet found in him "the stamp of Jesuitism." His"boreal light," however, caused them uneasiness. They searched for it inOrbigny's manual.
"This is a hypothesis to explain why the vegetable fossils of Baffin'sBay resemble the Equatorial plants. We suppose, in place of the sun, agreat luminous source of heat which has now disappeared, and of whichthe Aurora Borealis is but perhaps a vestige."
Then a doubt came to them as to what proceeds from man, and, in theirperplexity, they thought of Vaucorbeil.
He had not followed up his threats. As of yore, he passed every morningbefore their grating, striking all the bars with his walking-stick oneafter the other.
Bouvard watched him, and, having stopped him, said he wanted to submitto him a curious point in anthropology.
"Do you believe that the human race is descended from fishes?"
"What nonsense!"
"From apes rather--isn't that so?"
"Directly, that is impossible!"
On whom could they depend? For, in fact, the doctor was not a Catholic!
They continued their studies, but without enthusiasm, being weary ofeocene and miocene, of Mount Jurillo, of the Julia Island, of themammoths of Siberia and of the fossils, invariably compared in all theauthors to "medals which are authentic testimonies," so much so that oneday Bouvard threw his knapsack on the ground, declaring that he wouldnot go any farther.
"Geology is too defective. Some parts of Europe are hardly known. As forthe rest, together with the foundation of the oceans, we shall always bein a state of ignorance on the subject."
Finally, Pecuchet having pronounced the word "mineral kingdom":
"I don't believe in it, this mineral kingdom, since organic substanceshave taken part in the formation of flint, of chalk, and perhaps ofgold. Hasn't the diamond been charcoal; coal a collection of vegetables?and by heating it to I know not how many degrees, we get the sawdust ofwood, so that everything passes, everything goes to ruin, and everythingis transformed. Creation is carried out in an undulating and fugitivefashion. Much better to occupy ourselves with something else."
He stretched himself on his back and went to sleep, while Pecuchet, withhis head down and one knee between his hands, gave himself up to his ownreflections.
A border of moss stood on the edge of a hollow path overhung by ashtrees, whose slender tops quivered; angelica, mint, and lavender exhaledwarm, pungent odours. The atmosphere was drowsy, and Pecuchet, in a kindof stupor, dreamed of the innumerable existences scattered aroundhim--of the insects that buzzed, the springs hidden beneath the grass,the sap of plants, the birds in their nests, the wind, the clouds--ofall Nature, without seeking to unveil her mysteries, enchanted by herpower, lost in her grandeur.
"I'm thirsty!" said Bouvard, waking up.
"So am I. I should be glad to drink something."
"That's easy," answered a man who was passing by in his shirt-sleeveswith a plank on his shoulder. And they recognised that vagabond to whom,on a former occasion, Bouvard had given a glass of wine. He seemed tenyears younger, wore his hair foppishly curled, his moustache well waxed,and twisted his figure about in quite a Parisian fashion. After walkingabout a hundred paces, he opened the gateway of a farmyard, threw downhis plank against the wall, and led them into a large kitchen.
"Melie! are you there, Melie?"
A young girl appeared. At a word from him she drew some liquor and cameback to the table to serve the gentlemen.
Her wheat-coloured head-bands fell over a cap of grey linen. Her worndress of poor material fell down her entire body without a crease, and,with her straight nose and blue eyes, she had about her somethingdainty, rustic, and ingenuous.
"She's nice, eh?" said the joiner, while she was bringing them theglasses. "You might take her for a lady dressed up as a peasant-girl,and yet able to do rough work! Poor little heart, come! When I'm richI'll marry you!"
"You are always talking nonsense, _Monsieur_ Gorju," she replied, in asoft voice, with a slightly drawling accent.
A stable boy came in to get some oats out of an old chest, and let thelid fall down so awkwardly that it made splinters of wood fly upwards.
Gorju declaimed against the clumsiness of all "these country fellows,"then, on his knees in front of the article of furniture, he tried to putthe piece in its place. Pecuchet, while offering to assist him, tracedbeneath the dust faces of notable characters.
It was a chest of the Renaissance period, with a twisted fringe below,vine branches in the corner, and little columns dividing its front intofive portions. In the centre might be seen Venus-Anadyomene standing ona shell, then Hercules and Omphale, Samson and Delilah, Circe and herswine, the daughters of Lot making their father drunk; and all this in astate of complete decay, the chest being worm-eaten, and even its rightpanel wanting.
Gorju took a candle, in order to give Pecuchet a better view of the leftone, which exhibited Adam and Eve under a tree in Paradise in anaffectionate attitude.
Bouvard equally admired the chest.
"If you keep it they'll give it to you cheap."
They hesitated, thinking of the necessary repairs.
Gorju might do them, cabinet-making being a branch of his trade.
"Let us go. Come on."
And he dragged Pecuchet towards the fruit-garden, where MadameCastillon, the mistress, was spreading linen.
Melie, whe
n she had washed her hands, took from where it lay beside thewindow her lace-frame, sat down in the broad daylight and worked.
The lintel of the door enclosed her like a picture-frame. The bobbinsdisentangled themselves under her fingers with a sound like the clickingof castanets. Her profile remained bent.
Bouvard asked her questions as to her family, the part of the countryshe came from, and the wages she got.
She was from Ouistreham, had no relations alive, and earned seventeenshillings a month; in short, she pleased him so much that he wished totake her into his service to assist old Germaine.
Pecuchet reappeared with the mistress of the farm-house, and, while theywent on with their bargaining, Bouvard asked Gorju in a very low tonewhether the girl would consent to become their servant.
"Lord, yes."
"However," said Bouvard, "I must consult my friend."
The bargain had just been concluded, the price fixed for the chest beingthirty-five francs. They were to come to an understanding about therepairs.
They had scarcely got out into the yard when Bouvard spoke of hisintentions with regard to Melie.
Pecuchet stopped (in order the better to reflect), opened his snuff-box,took a pinch, and, wiping the snuff off his nose:
"Indeed, it is a good idea. Good heavens! yes! why not? Besides, you arethe master."
Ten minutes afterwards, Gorju showed himself on the top of a ditch, andquestioning them: "When do you want me to bring you the chest?"
"To-morrow."
"And about the other question, have you both made up your minds?"
"It's all right," replied Pecuchet.
Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 1 Page 3