Bouvard and Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert (top ten books to read txt) 📕
- Author: Gustave Flaubert
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About the end of autumn stains appeared in the three glass bowls containing the preserves. The tomatoes and green peas were rotten. That must have been due to the way they had stopped up the vessels. Then the problem of stoppage tormented them. In order to try the new methods, they required money; and the farm had eaten up their resources.
Many times tenants had offered themselves; but Bouvard would not have them. His principal farm-servant carried on the cultivation according to his directions, with a risky economy, to such an extent that the crops diminished and everything was imperilled; and they were talking about their embarrassments when Maître Gouy entered the laboratory, escorted by his wife, who remained timidly in the background.
Thanks to all the dressings they had got, the lands were improved, and he had come to take up the farm again. He ran it down. In spite of all their toils, the profits were uncertain; in short, if he wanted it, that was because of his love for the country, and his regret for such good masters.
They dismissed him coldly. He came back the same evening.
Pécuchet had preached at Bouvard; they were on the point of giving way. Gouy asked for a reduction of rent; and when the others protested, he began to bellow rather than speak, invoking the name of God, enumerating his labours, and extolling his merits. When they called on him to state his terms, he hung down his head instead of answering. Then his wife, seated near the door, with a big basket on her knees, made similar protestations, screeching in a sharp voice, like a hen that has been hurt.
At last the lease was agreed on, the rent being fixed at three thousand francs a year—a third less than it had been formerly.
Before they had separated, Maître Gouy offered to buy up the stock, and the bargaining was renewed.
The valuation of the chattels occupied fifteen days. Bouvard was dying of fatigue. He let everything go for a sum so contemptible that Gouy at first opened his eyes wide, and exclaiming, "Agreed!" slapped his palm.
After which the proprietors, following the old custom, proposed that they should take a "nip" at the house, and Pécuchet opened a bottle of his Malaga, less through generosity than in the hope of eliciting eulogies on the wine.
But the husbandman said, with a sour look, "It's like liquorice syrup." And his wife, "in order to get rid of the taste," asked for a glass of brandy.
A graver matter engaged their attention. All the ingredients of the "Bouvarine" were now collected. They heaped them together in the cucurbit, with the alcohol, lighted the fire, and waited. However, Pécuchet, annoyed by the misadventure about the Malaga, took the tin boxes out of the cupboard and pulled the lid off the first, then off the second, and then off the third. He angrily flung them down, and called out to Bouvard. The latter had fastened the cock of the worm in order to try the effect on the preserves.
The disillusion was complete. The slices of veal were like boiled boot-soles; a muddy fluid had taken the place of the lobster; the fish-stew was unrecognisable; mushroom growths had sprouted over the soup, and an intolerable smell tainted the laboratory.
Suddenly, with the noise of a bombshell, the still burst into twenty pieces, which jumped up to the ceiling, smashing the pots, flattening out the skimmers and shattering the glasses. The coal was scattered about, the furnace was demolished, and next day Germaine found a spatula in the yard.
The force of the steam had broken the instrument to such an extent that the cucurbit was pinned to the head of the still.
Pécuchet immediately found himself squatted behind the vat, and Bouvard lay like one who had fallen over a stool. For ten minutes they remained in this posture, not daring to venture on a single movement, pale with terror, in the midst of broken glass. When they were able to recover the power of speech, they asked themselves what was the cause of so many misfortunes, and of the last above all? And they could understand nothing about the matter except that they were near being killed. Pécuchet finished with these words:
"It is, perhaps, because we do not know chemistry!"
In order to understand chemistry they procured Regnault's course of lectures, and were, in the first place, informed that "simple bodies are perhaps compound." They are divided into metalloids and metals—a difference in which, the author observes, there is "nothing absolute." So with acids and bases, "a body being able to behave in the manner of acids or of bases, according to circumstances."
The notation appeared to them irregular. The multiple proportions perplexed Pécuchet.
"Since one molecule of a, I suppose, is combined with several particles of b, it seems to me that this molecule ought to be divided into 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, from which they acquired the certainty that ten litres of air weigh a hundred grammes, that lead does not go into pencils, and that the diamond is only carbon.
What amazed them above all is that the earth, as an element, does not exist.
They grasped the working of straw, gold, silver, the lye-washing of linen, the tinning of saucepans; then, without the least scruple, Bouvard and Pécuchet launched into organic chemistry.
What a marvel to find again in living beings the same substances of which the minerals are composed! Nevertheless they experienced a sort of humiliation at the idea that their own personality contained phosphorus, like matches; albumen, like the whites of eggs; and hydrogen gas, like street-lamps.
After colours and oily substances came the turn of fermentation. This brought them to acids—and the law of equivalents once more confused them. They tried to elucidate it by means of the atomic theory, which fairly swamped them.
In Bouvard's opinion instruments would have been necessary to understand all this. The expense was very great, and they had incurred too much already. But, no doubt, Dr. Vaucorbeil could enlighten them.
They presented themselves during his consultation hours.
"I hear you, gentlemen. What is your ailment?"
Pécuchet replied that they were not patients, and, having stated the object 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 learn chemistry.
"I am not denying its importance, you may be sure; but really they are shoving it in everywhere! It exercises a deplorable influence on medicine."
And the authority of his language was strengthened by the appearance of his surroundings. Over the chimney-piece trailed some diachylum and strips for binding. In the middle of the desk stood the surgical case. A basin in a corner was full of probes, and close to the wall there was a representation of a human figure deprived of the skin.
Pécuchet complimented the doctor on it.
"It must be a lovely study, anatomy."
M. Vaucorbeil expatiated on the fascination he had formerly found in dissections; and Bouvard inquired what were the analogies between the interior of a woman and that of a man.
In order to satisfy him, the doctor fetched from his library a collection of anatomical plates.
"Take them with you! You can look at them more at your ease in your own house."
The skeleton astonished them by the prominence of the jawbone, the holes for 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 it straight (why sixteen times exactly?). The metacarpals drove Bouvard crazy; and Pécuchet, who was in a desperate state over the cranium, lost courage before the sphenoid, although it resembles a Turkish or "Turkesque" saddle.
As for the articulations, they were hidden under too many ligaments; so they attacked the muscles. But the insertions were not easily discovered; and when they came to the vertebral grooves they gave it up completely.
Then Pécuchet said:
"If we took up chemistry again, would not this be only utilising the laboratory?"
Bouvard protested, and he thought he had a recollection of artificial corpses being manufactured according to the custom of hot countries.
Barberou, with whom he communicated, gave him some information about the matter. For ten francs a month they could have one of the manikins of M. Auzoux; and the following week the carrier from Falaise deposited before their gate an oblong box.
Full of emotion, they carried it into the bakehouse. When the boards were unfastened, the straw fell down, the silver paper slipped off, and the anatomical figure made its appearance.
It was brick-coloured, without hair or skin, and variegated with innumerable strings, red, blue, and white. It did not look like a corpse, but rather like a kind of plaything, very ugly, very clean, and smelling of varnish.
They next took off the thorax; and they perceived the two lungs, like a pair of sponges, the heart like a big egg, slightly sidewise behind the diaphragm, the kidneys, the entire bundle of entrails.
"To work!" said Pécuchet. The day and the evening were spent at it. They had 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 of pasteboard, 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 rushed immediately to the grocer's shop to tell the thing, and the whole village now imagined that they had a real corpse concealed in their house. Foureau, yielding to the public clamour, had come to make sure about the fact. A number of persons, anxious for information, stood outside the porch.
When he entered, the manikin was lying on its side, and the muscles of the face, having been loosened, caused a monstrous protrusion, and looked frightful.
"What brings you here?" said Pécuchet.
Foureau stammered: "Nothing, nothing at all." And, taking up one of the pieces from the table, "What is this?"
"The buccinator," replied Bouvard.
Foureau said nothing, but smiled in a sly fashion, jealous of their having an amusement which he could not afford.
The two anatomists pretended to be pursuing their investigations. The people outside, getting bored with waiting, made their way into the bakehouse, and, as they began pushing one another a little, the table shook.
"Ah! this is too annoying," exclaimed Pécuchet. "Let us be rid of the public!"
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 being medical men, they had the right to keep such an object in their possession. 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 between themselves and the others consoled them—they felt a longing to suffer in the cause of science.
The doctor, too, came to see them. He disparaged the model as too far removed from nature, but took advantage of the occasion to give them a lecture.
Bouvard and Pécuchet were delighted; and at their request M. Vaucorbeil
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