Bouvard and Pecuchet

by Gustave Flaubert

  "'Everything brings us to believe' was sublime."159

  "One thing vexed me," said Bouvard, "that there is no mention of his love affairs!" And they made a marginal note: "To search for the prince's amours."

  At the moment when they were taking their leave, the librarian, bethinking himself of it, showed them another portrait of the Duke of Angoulême.

  In this one he appeared as a colonel of cuirassiers, on a vaulting-horse, his eyes still smaller, his mouth open, and his hair straight.

  How were they to reconcile the two portraits? Had he straight hair, or rather crisped—unless he carried affectation so far as to get it curled?

  A grave question, from Pécuchet's point of view, for the mode of wearing the hair indicates the temperament, and the temperament the individual.

  Bouvard considered that we know nothing of a man as long as we are ignorant of his passions; and in order to clear up these two points, they presented themselves at the château of Faverges. The count was not there; this retarded their work. They returned home annoyed.

  The door of the house was wide open; there was nobody in the kitchen. They went upstairs, and who should they see in the middle of Bouvard's room but Madame Bordin, looking about her right and left!

  "Excuse me," she said, with a forced laugh, "I have for the last hour been searching for your cook, whom I wanted for my preserves."

  They found her in the wood-house on a chair fast asleep. They shook her. She opened her eyes.

  "What is it now? You are always prodding at me with your questions!"

  It was clear that Madame Bordin had been putting some to her in their absence.160

  Germaine got out of her torpor, and complained of indigestion.

  "I am remaining to take care of you," said the widow.

  Then they perceived in the courtyard a big cap, the lappets of which were fluttering. It was Madame Castillon, proprietress of a neighbouring farm. She was calling out: "Gorju! Gorju!"

  And from the corn-loft the voice of their little servant-maid answered loudly:

  "He is not there!"

  At the end of five minutes she came down, with her cheeks flushed and looking excited. Bouvard and Pécuchet reprimanded her for having been so slow. She unfastened their gaiters without a murmur.

  Then they went to look at the chest. The bakehouse was covered with its scattered fragments; the carvings were damaged, the leaves broken.

  At this sight, in the face of this fresh disaster, Bouvard had to keep back his tears, and Pécuchet got a fit of nervous shivering.

  Gorju, making his appearance almost immediately, explained the matter. He had just put the chest outside in order to varnish it, when a wandering cow knocked it down on the ground.

  "Whose cow?" said Pécuchet.

  "I don't know."

  "Ah! you left the door open, as you did some time ago. It is your fault."

  At any rate, they would have nothing more to do with him. He had been trifling with them too long, and they wanted no more of him or his work.

  "These gentlemen were wrong. The damage was not so great. It would be all settled before161 three weeks." And Gorju accompanied them into the kitchen, where Germaine was seen dragging herself along to see after the dinner.

  They noticed on the table a bottle of Calvados, three quarters emptied.

  "By you, no doubt," said Pécuchet to Gorju.

  "By me! never!"

  Bouvard met his protest by observing:

  "You are the only man in the house."

  "Well, and what about the women?" rejoined the workman, with a side wink.

  Germaine caught him up:

  "You'd better say 'twas I!"

  "Certainly it was you."

  "And perhaps 'twas I smashed the press?"

  Gorju danced about.

  "Don't you see that she's drunk?"

  Then they squabbled violently with each other, he with a pale face and a biting manner, she purple with rage, tearing tufts of grey hair from under her cotton cap. Madame Bordin took Germaine's part, while Mélie took Gorju's.

  The old woman burst out:

  "Isn't it an abomination that you two should be spending days together in the grove, not to speak of the nights?—a sort of Parisian, eating up honest women, who comes to our master's house to play tricks on them!"

  Bouvard opened his eyes wide.

  "What tricks?"

  "I tell you he's making fools of you!"

  "Nobody can make a fool of me!" exclaimed Pécuchet, and, indignant at her insolence, exasperated by the mortification inflicted on him, he dismissed 162her, telling her to go and pack. Bouvard did not oppose this decision, and they went out, leaving Germaine in sobs over her misfortune, while Madame Bordin was trying to console her.

  In the course of the evening, as they grew calmer, they went over these occurrences, asked themselves who had drunk the Calvados, how the chest got broken, what Madame Castillon wanted when she was calling Gorju, and whether he had dishonoured Mélie.

  "We are not able to tell," said Bouvard, "what is happening in our own household, and we lay claim to discover all about the hair and the love affairs of the Duke of Angoulême."

  Pécuchet added: "How many questions there are in other respects important and still more difficult!"

  Whence they concluded that external facts are not everything. It is necessary to complete them by means of psychology. Without imagination, history is defective.

  "Let us send for some historical romances!"

  * * *

  163

  CHAPTER V.

  Romance and the Drama.

  They first read Walter Scott.

  It was like the surprise of a new world.

  The men of the past who had for them been only phantoms or names, became living beings, kings, princes, wizards, footmen, gamekeepers, monks, gipsies, merchants, and soldiers, who deliberate, fight, travel, trade, eat and drink, sing and pray, in the armouries of castles, on the blackened benches of inns, in the winding streets of cities, under the sloping roofs of booths, in the cloisters of monasteries. Landscapes artistically arranged formed backgrounds for the narratives, like the scenery of a theatre. You follow with your eyes a horseman galloping along the strand; you breathe amid the heather the freshness of the wind; the moon shines on the lake, over which a boat is skimming; the sun glitters on the breast-plates; the rain falls over leafy huts. Without having any knowledge of the models, they thought these pictures lifelike and the illusion was complete.

  And so the winter was spent.164

  When they had breakfasted, they would instal themselves in the little room, one at each side of the chimney-piece, and, facing each other, book in hand, they would begin to read in silence. When the day wore apace, they would go out for a walk along the road, then, having snatched a hurried dinner, they would resume their reading far into the night. In order to protect himself from the lamp, Bouvard wore blue spectacles, while Pécuchet kept the peak of his cap drawn over his forehead.

  Germaine had not gone, and Gorju now and again came to dig in the garden; for they had yielded through indifference, forgetful of material things.

  After Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas diverted them after the fashion of a magic-lantern. His personages, active as apes, strong as bulls, gay as chaffinches, enter on the scene and talk abruptly, jump off roofs to the pavement, receive frightful wounds from which they recover, are believed to be dead, and yet reappear. There are trap-doors under the boards, antidotes, disguises; and all things get entangled, hurry along, and are finally unravelled without a minute for reflection. Love observes the proprieties, fanaticism is cheerful, and massacres excite a smile.

  Rendered hard to please by these two masters, they could not tolerate the balderdash of the Belisaraire, the foolery of the Numa Pompilius, of Marchangy, and Vicomte d'Arlincourt. The colouring of Frédéric Soulié (like that of the book-lover Jacob) appeared to them insufficient; and M. Villemain scandalised them by showing at page 85 of his Lasc
aris, a Spaniard smoking a pipe—a long Arab pipe—in the middle of the fifteenth century.165

  Pécuchet consulted the Biographie Universelle, and undertook to revise Dumas from the point of view of science.

  The author in Les Deux Dianes makes a mistake with regard to dates. The marriage of the Dauphin, Francis, took place on the 15th of October, 1548, and not on the 20th of May, 1549. How does he know (see Le Page du Duc de Savoie) that Catherine de Medicis, after her husband's death, wished to resume the war? It is not very probable that the Duke of Anjou was crowned at night in a church, an episode which adorns La Dame de Montsoreau. La Reine Margot especially swarms with errors. The Duke of Nevers was not absent. He gave his opinion at the council before the feast of St. Bartholomew, and Henry of Navarre did not follow the procession four days after. Henry III. did not come back from Poland so quickly. Besides, how many flimsy devices! The miracle of the hawthorn, the balcony of Charles IX., the poisoned glass of Jeanne d'Albret—Pécuchet no longer had any confidence in Dumas.

  He even lost all respect for Walter Scott on account of the oversights in his Quentin Durward. The murder of the Archbishop of Liège is anticipated by fifteen years. The wife of Robert de Lamarck was Jeanne d'Arschel and not Hameline de Croy. Far from being killed by a soldier, he was put to death by Maximilian; and the face of Temeraire, when his corpse was found, did not express any menace, inasmuch as the wolves had half devoured it.

  None the less, Bouvard went on with Walter Scott, but ended by getting weary of the repetition166 of the same effects. The heroine usually lives in the country with her father, and the lover, a plundered heir, is re-established in his rights and triumphs over his rivals. There are always a mendicant philosopher, a morose nobleman, pure young girls, facetious retainers, and interminable dialogues, stupid prudishness, and an utter absence of depth.

  In his dislike to bric-à-brac, Bouvard took up George Sand.

  He went into raptures over the beautiful adulteresses and noble lovers, would have liked to be Jacques, Simon, Lélio, and to have lived in Venice. He uttered sighs, did not know what was the matter with him, and felt himself changed.

  Pécuchet, who was working up historical literature studied plays. He swallowed two Pharamonds, three Clovises, four Charlemagnes, several Philip Augustuses, a crowd of Joan of Arcs, many Marquises de Pompadours, and some Conspiracies of Cellamare.

  Nearly all of them appeared still more stupid than the romances. For there exists for the stage a conventional history which nothing can destroy. Louis XI. will not fail to kneel before the little images in his hat; Henry IV. will be constantly jovial, Mary Stuart tearful, Richelieu cruel; in short, all the characters seem taken from a single block, from love of simplicity and regard for ignorance, so that the playwright, far from elevating, lowers, and, instead of instructing, stupefies.

  As Bouvard had spoken eulogistically to him about George Sand, Pécuchet proceeded to read Consuelo, Horace, and Mauprat, was beguiled by the author's vindication of the oppressed, the socialistic and republican 167aspect of her works, and the discussions contained in them.

  According to Bouvard, however, these elements spoiled the story, and he asked for love-tales at the circulating library.

  They read aloud, one after the other, La Nouvelle Héloïse, Delphine, Adolphe, and Ourika. But the listener's yawns proved contagious, for the book slipped out of the reader's hand to the floor.

  They found fault with the last-mentioned works for making no reference to the environment, the period, the costume of the various personages. The heart alone is the theme—nothing but sentiment! as if there were nothing else in the world.

  They next went in for novels of the humorous order, such as the Voyage autour de ma Chambre, by Xavier de Maistre, and Sous les Tilleuls, by Alphonse Karr. In books of this description the author must interrupt the narrative in order to talk about his dog, his slippers, or his mistress.

  A style so free from formality charmed them at first, then appeared stupid to them, for the author effaces his work while displaying in it his personal surroundings.

  Through need of the dramatic element, they plunged into romances of adventure. The more entangled, extraordinary, and impossible the plot was, the more it interested them. They did their best to foresee the dénouement, became very excited over it, and tired themselves out with a piece of child's play unworthy of serious minds.

  The work of Balzac amazed them like a Babylon, and at the same time like grains of dust under the microscope.168

  In the most commonplace things arise new aspects. They never suspected that there were such depths in modern life.

  "What an observer!" exclaimed Bouvard.

  "For my part I consider him chimerical," Pécuchet ended by declaring. "He believes in the occult sciences, in monarchy, in rank; is dazzled by rascals; turns up millions for you like centimes; and middle-class people are not with him middle-class people at all, but giants. Why inflate what is unimportant, and waste description on silly things? He wrote one novel on chemistry, another on banking, another on printing-machines, just as one Ricard produced The Cabman, The Water-Carrier and The Cocoa-Nut Seller. We should soon have books on every trade and on every province; then on every town and on the different stories of every house, and on every individual—which would be no longer literature but statistics or ethnography."

  The process was of little consequence in Bouvard's estimation. He wanted to get information—to acquire a deeper knowledge of human nature. He read Paul de Kock again, and ran through the Old Hermits of the Chaussée d'Antin.

  "Why lose one's time with such absurdities?" said Pécuchet.

  "But they might be very interesting as a series of documents."

  "Go away with your documents! I want something to lift me up, and take me away from the miseries of this world."

  And Pécuchet, craving for the ideal, led Bouvard unconsciously towards tragedy.

  The far-off times in which the action takes place,169 the interests with which it is concerned, and the high station of its leading personages impressed them with a certain sense of grandeur.

  One day Bouvard took up Athalie, and recited the dream so well that Pécuchet wished to attempt it in his turn. From the opening sentence his voice got lost in a sort of humming sound. It was monotonous and, though strong, indistinct.

  Bouvard, full of experience, advised him, in order to render it well-modulated, to roll it out from the lowest tone to the highest, and to draw it back by making use of an ascending and descending scale; and he himself went through this exercise every morning in bed, according to the precept of the Greeks. Pécuchet, at the time mentioned, worked in the same fashion: each had his door closed, and they went on bawling separately.

  The features that pleased them in tragedy were the emphasis, the political declamations, and the maxims on the perversity of things.

  They learned by heart the most celebrated dialogues of Racine and Voltaire, and they used to declaim them in the corridor. Bouvard, as if he were at the Théâtre Français, strutted, with his hand on Pécuchet's shoulder, stopping at intervals; and, with rolling eyes, he would open wide his arms, and accuse the Fates. He would give forth fine bursts of grief from the Philoctète of La Harpe, a nice death-rattle from Gabrielle de Vergy, and, when he played Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, the way in which he represented that personage gazing at his son while exclaiming, "Monster, worthy of me!" was indeed terrible. Pécuchet forgot his part in it. The ability, and not the will, was what he lacked.170

  On one occasion, in the Cléopâtre of Marmontel, he fancied that he could reproduce the hissing of the asp, just as the automaton invented for the purpose by Vaucanson might have done it. The abortive effort made them laugh all the evening. The tragedy sank in their estimation.

  Bouvard was the first to grow tired of it, and, dealing frankly with the subject, demonstrated how artificial and limping it was, the silliness of its incidents, and the absurdity of the disclosures made to confidants.

&n
bsp; They then went in for comedy, which is the school for fine shading. Every sentence must be dislocated, every word must be underlined, and every syllable must be weighed. Pécuchet could not manage it, and got quite stranded in Celimène. Moreover, he thought the lovers very cold, the disputes a bore, and the valets intolerable—Clitandre and Sganarelle as unreal as Ægistheus and Agamemnon.

  There remained the serious comedy or tragedy of everyday life, where we see fathers of families afflicted, servants saving their masters, rich men offering others their fortunes, innocent seamstresses and villainous corrupters, a species which extends from Diderot to Pixérécourt. All these plays preaching about virtue disgusted them by their triviality.

  The drama of 1830 fascinated them by its movement, its colouring, its youthfulness. They made scarcely any distinction between Victor Hugo, Dumas, or Bouchardy, and the diction was no longer to be pompous or fine, but lyrical, extravagant.

  One day, as Bouvard was trying to make Pécuchet understand Frédéric Lemaître's acting, Madame Bordin suddenly presented herself in a green shawl, carrying171 with her a volume of Pigault-Lebrun, the two gentlemen being so polite as to lend her novels now and then.

  "But go on!" for she had been a minute there already, and had listened to them with pleasure.

  They hoped she would excuse them. She insisted.

  "Faith!" said Bouvard, "there's nothing to prevent——"

  Pécuchet, through bashfulness, remarked that he could not act unprepared and without costume.

  "To do it effectively, we should need to disguise ourselves!"

  And Bouvard looked about for something to put on, but found only the Greek cap, which he snatched up.

  As the corridor was not big enough, they went down to the drawing-room. Spiders crawled along the walls, and the geological specimens that encumbered the floor had whitened with their dust the velvet of the armchairs. On the chair which had least dirt on it they spread a cover, so that Madame Bordin might sit down.