Bouvard and Pécuchet, part 2. Gustave Flaubert
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the cheese, kept talking of nutritious elements, and dazed the two youngsters with fibrine, caseine, fat and gluten.
After this, Pécuchet desired to explain to them how the blood is renewed, and he became puzzled over the explanation of circulation.
The dilemma is not an easy one; if you start with facts, the simplest require proofs that are too involved, and by laying down principles first, you begin with the absolute – faith.
How is it to be solved? By combining the two methods of teaching, the rational and the empirical; but a double means towards a single end is the reverse of method. Ah! so much the worse, then.
To initiate them in natural history, they tried some scientific excursions.
“You see,” said they, pointing towards an ass, a horse, an ox, “beasts with four feet – they are called quadrupeds. As a rule, birds have feathers, reptiles scales, and butterflies belong to the insect class.”
They had a net to catch them with, and Pécuchet, holding the insect up daintily, made them take notice of the four wings, the six claws, the two feelers, and of its bony proboscis, which drinks in the nectar of flowers.
He gathered herbs behind the ditches, mentioned their names, and, when he did not know them, invented them, in order to keep up his prestige. Besides, nomenclature is the least important thing in botany.
He wrote this axiom on the blackboard: “Every plant has leaves, a calyx, and a corolla enclosing an ovary or pericarp, which contains the seed.” Then he ordered his pupils to go looking for plants through the fields, and to collect the first that came to hand.
Victor brought him buttercups; Victorine a bunch of strawberries. He searched vainly for the pericarp.
Bouvard, who distrusted his own knowledge, rummaged in the library, and discovered in Le Redouté des Dames a sketch of an iris in which the ovaries were not situated in the corolla, but beneath the petals in the stem. In their garden were some scratchweeds and lilies-of-the-valley in flower. These rubiaceæ had no calyx; therefore the principle laid down on the blackboard was false.
“It is an exception,” said Pécuchet.
But chance led to the discovery of a field-madder in the grass, and it had a calyx.
“Goodness gracious! If the exceptions themselves are not true, what are we to put any reliance on?”
One day, in one of these excursions, they heard the cries of peacocks, glanced over the wall, and at first did not recognise their own farm. The barn had a slate roof; the railings were new; the pathways had been metalled.
Père Gouy made his appearance.
“ ’Tisn’t possible! Is it you?”
How many sad stories he had to tell of the past three years, amongst others the death of his wife! As for himself, he had always been as strong as an oak.
“Come in a minute.”
It was early in April, and in the three fruit-gardens rows of apple trees in full blossom showed their white and red clusters; the sky, which was like blue satin, was perfectly cloudless. Table-cloths, sheets, and napkins hung down, vertically attached to tightly-drawn ropes by wooden pins. Père Gouy lifted them as they passed; and suddenly they came face to face with Madame Bordin, bareheaded, in a dressing-gown, and Marianne offering her armfuls of linen.
“Your servant, gentlemen. Make yourselves at home. As for me, I shall sit down; I am worn out.”
The farmer offered to get some refreshment for the entire party.
“Not now,” said she; “I am too hot.”
Pécuchet consented, and disappeared into the cellar with Père Gouy, Marianne and Victor.
Bouvard sat down on the grass beside Madame Bordin.
He received the annual payment punctually; he had nothing to complain of; and he wished for nothing more.
The bright sunshine lighted up her profile. One of her black head-bands had come loose, and the little curls behind her neck clung to her brown skin, moistened with perspiration. With each breath her bosom heaved. The smell of the grass mingled with the odour of her solid flesh, and Bouvard felt a revival of his attachment, which filled him with joy. Then he complimented her about her property.
She was greatly charmed with it; and she told him about her plans. In order to enlarge the farmyard, she intended to take down the upper bank.
Victorine was at that moment climbing up the slopes, and gathering primroses, hyacinths, and violets, without being afraid of an old horse that was browsing on the grass at her feet.
“Isn’t she pretty?” said Bouvard.
“Yes, she is pretty, for a little girl.”
And the widow heaved a sigh, which seemed charged with life-long regret.
“You might have had one yourself.”
She hung down her head.
“That depended on you.”
“How?”
He gave her such a look that she grew purple, as if at the sensation of a rough caress; but, immediately fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief:
“You have let the opportunity slip, my dear.”
“I don’t quite understand.” And without rising he drew closer to her.
She remained looking down at him for some time; then smiling, with moist eyes:
“It is your fault.”
The sheets, hanging around them, hemmed them in, like the curtains of a bed.
He leaned forward on his elbow, so that his face touched her knees.
“Why? – eh? – why?”
And as she remained silent, while he was in a condition in which words cost nothing, he tried to justify himself; accused himself of folly, of pride.
“Forgive me! Let everything be as it was before. Do you wish it?” And he caught her hand, which she allowed to remain in his.
A sudden gust of wind blew up the sheets, and they saw two peacocks, a male and a female. The female stood motionless, with her tail in the air. The male marched around her, erected his tail into a fan and bridled up, making a clucking noise.
Bouvard was clasping the hand of Madame Bordin. She very quickly loosed herself. Before them, open-mouthed and, as it were, petrified, was young Victor staring at them; a short distance away Victorine, stretched on her back, in the full light of day, was inhaling all the flowers which she had gathered.
The old horse, frightened by the peacocks, broke one of the lines with a kick, got his legs entangled in it, and, galloping through the farmyard, dragged the washed linen after him.
At Madame Bordin’s wild screams Marianne rushed up. Pére Gouy abused his horse: “Fool of a beast! Old bag of bones! Infernal thief of a horse!” – kicked him in the belly, and lashed his ears with the handle of a whip.
Bouvard was shocked at seeing the animal maltreated.
The countryman, in answer to his protest, said:
“I’ve a right to do it; he’s my own.”
This was no justification. And Pécuchet, coming on the scene, added that animals too have their rights, for they have souls like ourselves – if indeed ours have any existence.
“You are an impious man!” exclaimed Madame Bordin.
Three things excited her anger: the necessity for beginning the washing over again, the outrage on her faith, and the fear of having been seen just now in a compromising attitude.
“I thought you were more liberal,” said Bouvard.
She replied, in a magisterial manner, “I don’t like scamps.”
And Gouy laid the blame on them for having injured his horse, whose nostrils were bleeding. He growled in a smothered voice:
“Damned