As for military escalades, the author extols the ladder of Bois-Rosé, so called from the captain who surprised Fécamp in former days by climbing up the cliff.
In accordance with the engraving in the book, they trimmed a rope with little sticks and fixed it under the cart-shed. As soon as the first stick is bestridden and the third grasped, the limbs are thrown out in order that the second, which a moment before was against the chest, might be directly under the thighs. The climber then springs up and grasps the fourth, and so goes on.
In spite of prodigious strainings of the hips, they found it impossible to reach the second step. Perhaps there is less trouble in hanging on to stones with your hands, just as Bonaparte's soldiers did at the attack of Fort Chambray? and to make one capable of such an action, Amoros has a tower in his establishment.
The wall in ruins might do as a substitute for it. They attempted the assault with it. But Bouvard, having withdrawn his foot too quickly from a hole, got frightened, and was seized with dizziness.
Pécuchet blamed their method for it. They had neglected that which relates to the phalanxes, so that they should go back to first principles.
His exhortations were fruitless; and then, in his pride and presumption, he went in for stilts.
Nature seemed to have destined him for them, for he immediately made use of the great model with flat boards four feet from the ground, and, balanced thereon, he stalked over the garden like a gigantic stork taking exercise.
Bouvard, at the window, saw him stagger and then flop down all of a heap over the kidney-beans, whose props, giving way as he descended, broke his fall.
He was picked up covered with mould, his nostrils bleeding — livid; and he fancied that he had strained himself.
Decidedly, gymnastics did not agree with men of their age. They abandoned them, did not venture to move about any longer for fear of accidents, and they remained the whole day sitting in the museum dreaming of other occupations.
This change of habits had an influence on Bouvard's health. He became very heavy, puffed like a whale after his meals, tried to make himself thin, ate less, and began to grow weak.
Pécuchet, in like manner, felt himself "undermined," had itchings in his skin and lumps in his throat.
"This won't do," said they; "this won't do."
Bouvard thought of going to select at the inn some bottles of Spanish wine in order to put his bodily machinery in order.
As he was going out, Marescot's clerk and three men brought from Beljambe a large walnut table. "Monsieur" was much obliged to him for it. It had been conveyed in perfect order.
Bouvard in this way learned about the new fashion of table-turning. He joked about it with the clerk.
However, all over Europe, America, Australia and the Indies, millions of mortals passed their lives in making tables turn; and they discovered the way to make prophets of canaries, to give concerts without instruments, and to correspond by means of snails. The press, seriously offering these impostures to the public, increased its credulity.
The spirit-rappers had alighted at the château of Faverges, and thence had spread through the village; and the notary questioned them particularly.
Shocked at Bouvard's scepticism, he invited the two friends to an evening party at table-turning.
Was this a trap? Madame Bordin was to be there. Pécuchet went alone.
There were present as spectators the mayor, the tax-collector, the captain, other residents and their wives, Madame Vaucorbeil, Madame Bordin, of course, besides Mademoiselle Laverrière, Madame Marescot's former schoolmistress, a rather squint-eyed lady with her hair falling over her shoulders in the corkscrew fashion of 1830. In an armchair sat a cousin from Paris, attired in a blue coat and wearing an air of insolence.
The two bronze lamps, the whatnot containing a number of curiosities, ballads embellished with vignettes on the piano, and small water-colours in huge frames, had always excited astonishment in Chavignolles. But this evening all eyes were directed towards the mahogany table. They would test it by and by, and it had the importance of things which contain a mystery. A dozen guests took their places around it with outstretched hands and their little fingers touching one another. Only the ticking of the clock could be heard. The faces indicated profound attention. At the end of ten minutes several complained of tinglings in the arms.
Pécuchet was incommoded.
"You are pushing!" said the captain to Foureau.
"Not at all."
"Yes, you are!"
"Ah! sir."
The notary made them keep quiet.
By dint of straining their ears they thought they could distinguish cracklings of wood.
An illusion! Nothing had budged.
The other day when the Aubert and Lorraine families had come from Lisieux and they had expressly borrowed Beljambe's table for the occasion, everything had gone on so well. But this to-day exhibited a certain obstinacy. Why?
The carpet undoubtedly counteracted it, and they changed to the dining-room.
The round table, which was on rollers, glided towards the right-hand side. The operators, without displacing their fingers, followed its movements, and of its own accord it made two turns. They were astounded.
Then M. Alfred articulated in a loud voice:
"Spirit, how do you find my cousin?"
The table, slowly oscillating, struck nine raps. According to a slip of paper, in which the number of raps were translated by letters, this meant "Charming."
A number of voices exclaimed "Bravo!"
Then Marescot, to tease Madame Bordin, called on the spirit to declare her exact age.
The foot of the table came down with five taps.
"What? five years!" cried Girbal.
"The tens don't count," replied Foureau.
The widow smiled, though she was inwardly annoyed.
The replies to the other questions were missing, so complicated was the alphabet.
Much better was the plane table — an expeditious medium of which Mademoiselle Laverrière had made use for the purpose of noting down in an album the direct communications of Louis XII., Clémence Isaure, Franklin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. These mechanical contrivances are sold in the Rue d'Aumale. M. Alfred promised one of them; then addressing the schoolmistress: "But for a quarter of an hour we should have a little music; don't you think so? A mazurka!"
Two metal chords vibrated. He took his cousin by the waist, disappeared with her, and came back again.
The sweep of her dress, which just brushed the doors as they passed, cooled their faces. She flung back her head; he curved his arms. The gracefulness of the one, the playful air of the other, excited general admiration; and, without waiting for the rout cakes, Pécuchet took himself off, amazed at the evening's exhibition.
In vain did he repeat: "But I have seen it! I have seen it!"
Bouvard denied the facts, but nevertheless consented to make an experiment himself.
For a fortnight they spent every afternoon facing each other, with their hands over a table, then over a hat, over a basket, and over plates. All these remained motionless.
The phenomenon of table-turning is none the less certain. The common herd attribute it to spirits; Faraday to prolonged nervous action; Chevreuil to unconscious efforts; or perhaps, as Segouin admits, there is evolved from the assembly of persons an impulse, a magnetic current.
This hypothesis made Pécuchet reflect. He took into his library the Magnetiser's Guide, by Montacabère, read it over attentively, and initiated Bouvard in the theory: All animated bodies receive and communicate the influence of the stars — a property analogous to the virtue of the loadstone. By directing this force we may cure the sick; there is the principle. Science has developed since Mesmer; but it is always an important thing to pour out the fluid and to make passes, which, in the first place, must have the effect of inducing sleep.
"Well! send me to sleep," said Bouvard.
"Impossible!" replied Pécuc
het: "in order to be subject to the magnetic action, and to transmit it, faith is indispensable."
Then, gazing at Bouvard: "Ah! what a pity!"
"How?"
"Yes, if you wished, with a little practice, there would not be a magnetiser anywhere like you."
For he possessed everything that was needed: easiness of access, a robust constitution, and a solid mind.
The discovery just made of such a faculty in himself was flattering to Bouvard. He took a plunge into Montacabère's book on the sly.
Then, as Germaine used to feel buzzings in her ears that deafened her, he said to her one evening in a careless tone:
"Suppose we try magnetism?"
She did not make any objection to it. He sat down in front of her, took her two thumbs in his hands, and looked fixedly at her, as if he had not done anything else all his life.
The old dame, with her feet on a footwarmer, began by bending her neck; her eyes closed, and quite gently she began to snore. At the end of an hour, during which they had been staring at her, Pécuchet said in a low tone:
"What do you feel?"
She awoke.
Later, no doubt, would come lucidity.
This success emboldened them, and, resuming with self-confidence, the practice of medicine, they nursed Chamberlan, the beadle, for pains in his ribs; Migraine the mason, who had a nervous affection of the stomach; Mère Varin, whose encephaloid under the collar-bone required, in order to nourish her, plasters of meat; a gouty patient, Père Lemoine, who used to crawl by the side of taverns; a consumptive; a person afflicted with hemiplegia, and many others. They also treated corns and chilblains.
After an investigation into the disease, they cast questioning glances at each other to determine what passes to use, whether the currents should be large or small, ascending or descending, longitudinal, transversal, bidigital, tridigital, or even quindigital.
When the one had had too much of it, the other replaced him. Then, when they had come back to their own house, they noted down their observation in their diary of treatment.
Their suave manners captivated everyone. However, Bouvard was liked better, and his reputation spread as far as Falaise, where he had cured La Barbée, the daughter of Père Barbée, a retired captain of long standing.
She had felt something like a nail in the back of her head, spoke in a hoarse voice, often remained several days without eating, and then would devour plaster or coal. Her nervous crises, beginning with sobs, ended in floods of tears; and every kind of remedy, from diet-drinks to moxas, had been employed, so that, through sheer weariness, she accepted Bouvard's offer to cure her.
When he had dismissed the servant-maid and bolted the door, he began rubbing her abdomen, while leaning over the seat of the ovaries. A sense of relief manifested itself by sighs and yawns. He placed his finger between her eyebrows and the top of her nose: all at once she became inert. If one lifted her arms, they fell down again. Her head remained in whatever attitude he wished, and her lids, half closed, vibrating with a spasmodic movement, allowed her eyeballs to be seen rolling slowly about; they riveted themselves on the corners convulsively.
Bouvard asked her if she were in pain. She replied that she was not. Then he inquired what she felt now. She indicated the inside of her body.
"What do you see there?"
"A worm."
"What is necessary in order to kill it?"
She wrinkled her brow. "I am looking for — I am not able! I am not able!"
At the second sitting she prescribed for herself nettle-broth; at the third, catnip. The crises became mitigated, then disappeared. It was truly a miracle. The nasal addigitation did not succeed with the others, and, in order to bring on somnambulism, they projected the construction of a mesmeric tub. Pécuchet already had even collected the filings and cleaned a score of bottles, when a scruple made him hesitate.
Amongst the patients there would be persons of the other sex.
"And what are we to do if this should give rise to an outburst of erotic mania?"
This would not have proved any impediment to Bouvard; but for fear of impostures and attempts to extort hush-money, it was better to put aside the project. They contented themselves with a collection of musical glasses, which they carried about with them to the different houses, so as to delight the children.
One day, when Migraine was worse, they had recourse to the musical glasses. The crystalline sounds exasperated him; but Deleuze enjoins that one should not be frightened by complaints; and so they went on with the music.
"Enough! enough!" he cried.
"A little patience!" Bouvard kept repeating.
Pécuchet tapped more quickly on the glass plates, and the instrument was vibrating in the midst of the poor man's cries when the doctor appeared, attracted by the hubbub.
"What! you again?" he exclaimed, enraged at finding them always with his patients.
They explained their magnetic method of curing. Then he declaimed against magnetism — "a heap of juggleries, whose effects came only from the imagination."
However, animals are magnetised. Montacabère so states, and M. Fontaine succeeded in magnetising a lion. They had not a lion, but chance had offered them another animal.
For on the following day a ploughboy came to inform them that they were wanted up at the farm for a cow in a hopeless condition.
They hurried thither. The apple trees were in bloom, and the herbage in the farmyard was steaming under the rays of the rising sun.
At the side of a pond, half covered with a cloth, a cow was lowing, while she shivered under the pails of water that were being emptied over her body, and, enormously swollen, she looked like a hippopotamus.
Without doubt she had got "venom" while grazing amid the clover. Père Gouy and his wife were afflicted because the veterinary surgeon was not able to come, and the wheelwright who had a charm against swelling did not choose to put himself out of his way; but "these gentlemen, whose library was famous, must know the secret."
Having tucked up their sleeves, they placed themselves one in front of the horns, the other at the rump, and, with great internal efforts and frantic gesticulations, they spread wide their fingers in order to scatter streams of fluid over the animal, while the farmer, his wife, their son, and the neighbours regarded them almost with terror.
The rumblings which were heard in the cow's belly caused borborygms in the interior of her bowels. She emitted wind.
Pécuchet thereupon said: "This is an opening door for hope — an outlet, perhaps."
The outlet produced its effect: the hope gushed forth in a bundle of yellow stuff, bursting with the force of a shell. The hide got loose; the cow got rid of her swelling. An hour later there was no longer any sign of it.
This was certainly not the result of imagination. Therefore the fluid contained some special virtue. It lets itself be shut up in the objects to whom it is given without being impaired. Such an expedient saves displacements. They adopted it; and they sent their clients magnetised tokens, magnetised handkerchiefs, magnetised water, and magnetised bread.
Then, continuing their studies, they abandoned the passes for the system of Puységur, which replaces the magnetiser by means of an old tree, about the trunk of which a cord is rolled.
A pear tree in their fruit garden seemed made expressly for the purpose. They prepared it by vigorously encircling it with many pressures. A bench was placed underneath. Their clients sat in a row, and the results obtained there were so marvellous that, in order to get the better of Vaucorbeil, they invited him to a séance along with the leading personages of the locality.
Not one failed to attend. Germaine received them in the breakfast-room, making excuses on behalf of her masters, who would join them presently.
From time to time they heard the bell ringing. It was the patients whom she was bringing in by another way. The guests nudged one another, drawing attention to the windows covered with dust, the stains on the panels, the frayed pictures; and t
he garden, too, was in a wretched state. Dead wood everywhere! The orchard was barricaded with two sticks thrust into a gap in the wall.
Pécuchet made his appearance. "At your service, gentlemen."
And they saw at the end of the garden, under the Edouïn pear tree, a number of persons seated.
Chamberlan, clean-shaven like a priest, in a short cassock of lasting, with a leathern cap, gave himself up to the shivering sensations engendered by the pains in his ribs. Migraine, whose stomach was always tormenting him, made wry faces close beside him. Mère Varin, to hide her tumour, wore a shawl with many folds. Père Lemoine, his feet stockingless in his old shoes, had his crutches under his knees; and La Barbée, who wore her Sunday clothes, looked exceedingly pale.
At the opposite side of the tree were other persons. A woman with an albino type of countenance was sponging the suppurating glands of her neck; a little girl's face half disappeared under her blue glasses; an old man, whose spine was deformed by a contraction, with his involuntary movements knocked against Marcel, a sort of idiot clad in a tattered blouse and a patched pair of trousers. His hare-lip, badly stitched, allowed his incisors to be seen, and his jaw, which was swollen by an enormous inflammation, was muffled up in linen.
They were all holding in their hands pieces of twine that hung down from the tree. The birds were singing, and the air was impregnated with the refreshing smell of grass. The sun played with the branches, and the ground was smooth as moss.
Meanwhile, instead of going to sleep, the subjects of the experiment were straining their eyes.
"Up to the present," said Foureau, "it is not funny. Begin. I am going away for a minute."
And he came back smoking an Abd-el-Kader, the last that was left from the gate with the pipes.
Pécuchet recalled to mind an admirable method of magnetising. He put into his mouth the noses of all the patients in succession, and inhaled their breath, in order to attract the electricity to himself; and at the same time Bouvard clasped the tree, with the object of augmenting the fluid.
Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert Page 268