Bouvard and Pecuchet

by Gustave Flaubert

  The curé then made this reflection:

  "Why do we not see into it quite easily?"

  "The demons—is that what you say?" asked Vaucorbeil.

  Instead of again opening his lips, the abbé nodded his head.

  Marescot spoke of the Pythia of Delphi.

  "Beyond all question, miasmas."

  "Oh! miasmas now!"260

  "As for me, I admit the existence of a fluid," remarked Bouvard.

  "Nervoso-siderial," added Pécuchet.

  "But prove it, show it, this fluid of yours! Besides, fluids are out of fashion. Listen to me."

  Vaucorbeil moved further up to get into the shade. The others followed him.

  "If you say to a child, 'I am a wolf; I am going to eat you,' he imagines that you are a wolf, and he is frightened. Therefore, this is a vision conjured up by words. In the same way the somnambulist accepts any fancies that you desire him to accept. He recollects instead of imagining, and has merely sensations when he believes that he is thinking. In this manner it is possible for crimes to be suggested, and virtuous people may see themselves ferocious beasts, and involuntarily become cannibals."

  Glances were cast towards Bouvard and Pécuchet. Their scientific pursuits were fraught with dangers to society.

  Marescot's clerk reappeared in the garden flourishing a letter from Madame Vaucorbeil.

  The doctor tore it open, turned pale, and finally read these words:

  "I am sewing ribbons on a straw hat."

  Amazement prevented them from bursting into a laugh.

  "A mere coincidence, deuce take it! It proves nothing."

  And as the two magnetisers wore looks of triumph, he turned round at the door to say to them:

  "Don't go further. These are risky amusements."

  The curé, while leading away his beadle, reproved them sternly:261

  "Are you mad? Without my permission! Practices forbidden by the Church!"

  They had all just taken their leave; Bouvard and Pécuchet were talking to the schoolmaster on the hillock, when Marcel rushed from the orchard, the bandage of his chin undone, and stuttered:

  "Cured! cured! good gentlemen."

  "All right! enough! Let us alone."

  Petit, a man of advanced ideas, thought the doctor's explanation commonplace and unenlightened. Science is a monopoly in the hands of the rich. She excludes the people. To the old-fashioned analysis of the Middle Ages it is time that a large and ready-witted synthesis should succeed. Truth should be arrived at through the heart. And, declaring himself a spiritualist, he pointed out several works, no doubt imperfect, but the heralds of a new dawn.

  They sent for them.

  Spiritualism lays down as a dogma the fated amelioration of our species. Earth will one day become Heaven. And this is the reason why the doctrine fascinated the schoolmaster. Without being Catholic, it was known to St. Augustine and St. Louis. Allan Kardec even has published some fragments dictated by them which are in accordance with contemporary opinions. It is practical as well as benevolent, and reveals to us, like the telescope, the supernal worlds.

  Spirits, after death and in a state of ecstasy, are transported thither. But sometimes they descend upon our globe, where they make furniture creak, mingle in our amusements, taste the beauties of Nature, and the pleasures of the arts.

  Nevertheless, there are amongst us many who possess an astral trunk—that is to say, behind the262 ear a long tube which ascends from the hair to the planets, and permits us to converse with the spirits of Saturn. Intangible things are not less real, and from the earth to the stars, from the stars to the earth, a see-saw motion takes place, a transmission, a continual change of place.

  Then Pécuchet's heart swelled with extravagant aspirations, and when night had come Bouvard surprised him at the window contemplating those luminous spaces which are peopled with spirits.

  Swedenborg made rapid journeys to them. For in less than a year he explored Venus, Mars, Saturn, and, twenty-three times, Jupiter. Moreover, he saw Jesus Christ in London; he saw St. Paul; he saw St. John; he saw Moses; and in 1736 he saw the Last Judgment.

  He has also given us descriptions of Heaven.

  Flowers, palaces, market-places, and churches are found there, just as with us. The angels, who were formerly human beings, lay their thoughts upon leaves, chat about domestic affairs or else on spiritual matters; and the ecclesiastical posts are assigned to those who, in their earthly career, cultivated the Holy Scripture.

  As for Hell, it is filled with a nauseous smell, with hovels, heaps of filth, quagmires, and ill-clad persons.

  And Pécuchet racked his brain in order to comprehend what was beautiful in these revelations. To Bouvard they seemed the delirium of an imbecile. All such matters transcend the bounds of Nature. Who, however, can know anything about them? And they surrendered themselves to the following reflections:263

  Jugglers can cause illusions amongst a crowd; a man with violent passions can excite other people by them; but how can the will alone act upon inert matter? A Bavarian, it is said, was able to ripen grapes; M. Gervais revived a heliotrope; one with greater power scattered the clouds at Toulouse.

  It is necessary to admit an intermediary substance between the universe and ourselves? The od, a new imponderable, a sort of electricity, is perhaps nothing else. Its emissions explain the light that those who have been magnetised believe they see: the wandering flames in cemeteries, the forms of phantoms.

  These images would not, therefore, be illusions, and the extraordinary gifts of persons who are possessed, like those of clairvoyants, would have a physical cause.

  Whatever be their origin, there is an essence, a secret and universal agent. If we could take possession of it, there would be no need of force, of duration. That which requires ages would develop in a minute; every miracle would be practicable, and the universe would be at our disposal.

  Magic springs from this eternal yearning of the human mind. Its value has no doubt been exaggerated, but it is not a falsehood. Some Orientals who are skilled in it perform prodigies. All travellers have vouched for its existence, and at the Palais Royal M. Dupotet moves with his finger the magnetic needle.

  How to become magicians? This idea appeared to them foolish at first, but it returned, tormented them, and they yielded to it, even while affecting to laugh.

  A course of preparation is indispensable.264

  In order to excite themselves the better, they kept awake at night, fasted, and, wishing to convert Germaine into a more delicate medium, they limited her diet. She indemnified herself by drinking, and consumed so much brandy that she speedily ended in becoming intoxicated. Their promenades in the corridor awakened her. She confused the noise of their footsteps with the hummings in her ears and the voices which she imagined she heard coming from the walls. One day, when she had put a plaice into the pantry, she was frightened on seeing it covered with flame; she became worse than ever after that, and ended by believing that they had cast a spell over her.

  Hoping to behold visions, they pressed the napes of each other's necks; they made themselves little bags of belladonna; finally they adopted the magic box, out of which rises a mushroom bristling with nails, to be worn over the heart by means of a ribbon attached to the breast. Everything proved unsuccessful. But they might make use of the sphere of Dupotet!

  Pécuchet, with a piece of charcoal, traced on the ground a black shield, in order to enclose within its compass the animal spirits whose duty it is to assist the ambient spirits, and rejoicing at having the mastery over Bouvard, he said to him, with a pontifical air:

  "I defy you to cross it!"

  Bouvard viewed this circular space. Soon his heart began throbbing, his eyes became clouded.

  "Ha! let us make an end of it!" And he jumped over it, to get rid of an inexpressible sense of unpleasantness.265

  Pécuchet, whose exultation was increasing, desired to make a corpse appear.

  Under the Directory a man in the Rue de l'
Échiquier exhibited the victims of the Terror. There are innumerable examples of persons coming back from the other world. Though it may be a mere appearance, what matter? The thing was to produce the effect.

  The nearer to us we feel the phantom, the more promptly it responds to our appeal. But he had no relic of his family—ring, miniature, or lock of hair—while Bouvard was in a position to conjure up his father; but, as he testified a certain repugnance on the subject, Pécuchet asked him:

  "What are you afraid of?"

  "I? Oh! nothing at all! Do what you like."

  They kept Chamberlan in their pay, and he supplied them by stealth with an old death's-head. A seamster cut out for them two long black robes with hoods attached, like monks' habits. The Falaise coach brought them a large parcel in a wrapper. Then they set about the work, the one interested in executing it, the other afraid to believe in it.

  The museum was spread out like a catafalque. Three wax tapers burned at the side of the table pushed against the wall beneath the portrait of Père Bouvard, above which rose the death's-head. They had even stuffed a candle into the interior of the skull, and rays of light shot out through the two eyeholes.

  In the centre, on a chafing-dish, incense was smoking. Bouvard kept in the background, and Pécuchet, turning his back to him, cast handfuls of sulphur into the fireplace.266

  Before invoking a corpse the consent of the demons is required. Now, this day being a Friday—a day which is assigned to Béchet—they should occupy themselves with Béchet first of all.

  Bouvard, having bowed to the right and to the left, bent his chin, and raised his arms, began:

  "In the names of Ethaniel, Anazin, Ischyros——"

  He forgot the rest.

  Pécuchet rapidly breathed forth the words, which had been jotted down on a piece of pasteboard:

  "Ischyros, Athanatos, Adonaï, Sadaï, Eloy, Messiasös" (the litany was a long one), "I implore thee, I look to thee, I command thee, O Béchet!"

  Then, lowering his voice:

  "Where art thou, Béchet? Béchet! Béchet! Béchet!"

  Bouvard sank into the armchair, and he was very pleased at not seeing Béchet, a certain instinct reproaching him with making an experiment which was a kind of sacrilege.

  Where was his father's soul? Could it hear him? What if, all at once, it were about to appear?

  The curtains slowly moved under the wind, which made its way in through a cracked pane of glass, and the wax-tapers caused shadows to oscillate above the corpse's skull and also above the painted face. An earthy colour made them equally brown. The cheek-bones were consumed by mouldiness, the eyes no longer possessed any lustre; but a flame shone above them in the eyeholes of the empty skull. It seemed sometimes to take the other's place, to rest on the collar of the frock-coat, to have a beard on it; and the canvas, half unfastened, swayed and palpitated.267

  Little by little they felt, as it were, the sensation of being touched by a breath, the approach of an impalpable being. Drops of sweat moistened Pécuchet's forehead, and Bouvard began to gnash his teeth: a cramp gripped his epigastrium; the floor, like a wave, seemed to flow under his heels; the sulphur burning in the chimney fell down in spirals. At the same moment bats flitted about. A cry arose. Who was it?

  And their faces under their hoods presented such a distorted aspect that, gazing at each other, they were becoming more frightened than before, not venturing either to move or to speak, when behind the door they heard groans like those of a soul in torture.

  At length they ran the risk. It was their old housekeeper, who, espying them through a slit in the partition, imagined she saw the devil, and, falling on her knees in the corridor, kept repeatedly making the sign of the Cross.

  All reasoning was futile. She left them the same evening, having no desire to be employed by such people.

  Germaine babbled. Chamberlan lost his place, and he formed against them a secret coalition, supported by the Abbé Jeufroy, Madame Bordin, and Foureau.

  Their way of living, so unlike that of other people, gave offence. They became objects of suspicion, and even inspired a vague terror.

  What destroyed them above all in public opinion was their choice of a servant. For want of another, they had taken Marcel.

  His hare-lip, his hideousness, and the gibberish he talked made people avoid him. A deserted child, he268 had grown up, the sport of chance, in the fields, and from his long-continued privations he became possessed by an insatiable appetite. Animals that had died of disease, putrid bacon, a crushed dog—everything agreed with him so long as the piece was thick; and he was as gentle as a sheep, but utterly stupid.

  Gratitude had driven him to offer himself as a servant to MM. Bouvard and Pécuchet; and then, believing that they were wizards, he hoped for extraordinary gains.

  Soon after the first days of his employment with them, he confided to them a secret. On the heath of Poligny a man had formerly found an ingot of gold. The anecdote is related by the historians of Falaise; they were ignorant of its sequel: Twelve brothers, before setting out on a voyage, had concealed twelve similar ingots along the road from Chavignolles to Bretteville, and Marcel begged of his masters to begin a search for them over again. These ingots, said they to each other, had perhaps been buried just before emigration.

  This was a case for the use of the divining-rod. Its virtues are doubtful. They studied the question, however, and learned that a certain Pierre Garnier gives scientific reasons to vindicate its claims: springs and metals throw out corpuscles which have an affinity with the wood.

  "This is scarcely probable. Who knows, however? Let us make the attempt."

  They cut themselves a forked branch from a hazel tree, and one morning set forth to discover the treasure.

  "It must be given up," said Bouvard.269

  "Oh, no! bless your soul!"

  After they had been three hours travelling, a thought made them draw up: "The road from Chavignolles to Bretteville!—was it the old or the new road? It must be the old!"

  They went back, and rushed through the neighbourhood at random, the direction of the old road not being easy to discover.

  Marcel went jumping from right to left, like a spaniel running at field-sports. Bouvard was compelled to call him back every five minutes. Pécuchet advanced step by step, holding the rod by the two branches, with the point upwards. Often it seemed to him that a force and, as it were, a cramp-iron drew it towards the ground; and Marcel very rapidly made a notch in the neighbouring trees, in order to find the place later.

  Pécuchet, however, slackened his pace. His mouth was open; the pupils of his eyes were contracted. Bouvard questioned him, caught hold of his shoulders, and shook him. He did not stir, and remained inert, exactly like La Barbée. Then he said he felt around his heart a kind of compression, a singular experience, arising from the rod, no doubt, and he no longer wished to touch it.

  They returned next day to the place where the marks had been made on the trees. Marcel dug holes with a spade; nothing, however, came of it, and each time they felt exceedingly sheepish. Pécuchet sat down by the side of a ditch, and while he mused, with his head raised, striving to hear the voices of the spirits through his astral body, asking himself whether he even had one, he fixed his eyes on the peak of his cap; the ecstasy of the previous day once270 more took possession of him. It lasted a long time, and became dreadful.

  Above some oats in a by-path appeared a felt hat: it was that of M. Vaucorbeil on his mare.

  Bouvard and Marcel called out to him.

  The crisis was drawing to an end when the physician arrived. In order to examine Pécuchet he lifted his cap, and perceiving a forehead covered with coppery marks:

  "Ha! ha! Fructus belli! Those are love-spots, my fine fellow! Take care of yourself. The deuce! let us not trifle with love."

  Pécuchet, ashamed, again put on his cap, a sort of head-piece that swelled over a peak shaped like a half-moon, the model of which he had taken from the Atlas of Amoros.
<
br />   The doctor's words astounded him. He kept thinking of them with his eyes staring before him, and suddenly had another seizure.

  Vaucorbeil watched him, then, with a fillip, knocked off his cap.

  Pécuchet recovered his faculties.

  "I suspected as much," said the physician; "the glazed peak hypnotises you like a mirror; and this phenomenon is not rare with persons who look at a shining substance too attentively."

  He pointed out how the experiment might be made on hens, then mounted his nag, and slowly disappeared from their view.

  Half a league further on they noticed, in a farmyard, a pyramidal object stretched out towards the horizon. It might have been compared to an enormous bunch of black grapes marked here and there with red dots. It was, in fact, a long pole, garnished,271 according to the Norman custom, with cross-bars, on which were perched turkeys bridling in the sunshine.

  "Let us go in." And Pécuchet accosted the farmer, who yielded to their request.

  They traced a line with whiting in the middle of the press, tied down the claws of a turkey-cock, then stretched him flat on his belly, with his beak placed on the line. The fowl shut his eyes, and soon presented the appearance of being dead. The same process was gone through with the others. Bouvard passed them quickly across to Pécuchet, who ranged them on the side on which they had become torpid.

  The people about the farm-house exhibited uneasiness. The mistress screamed, and a little girl began to cry.

  Bouvard loosened all the turkeys. They gradually revived; but one could not tell what might be the consequences.

  At a rather tart remark of Pécuchet, the farmer grasped his pitchfork tightly.

  "Clear out, in God's name, or I'll smash your head!"

  They scampered off.

  No matter! the problem was solved: ecstasy is dependent on material causes.

  What, then, is matter? What is spirit? Whence comes the influence of the one on the other, and the reciprocal exchange of influence?

  In order to inform themselves on the subject, they made researches in the works of Voltaire, Bossuet, Fénelon; and they renewed their subscription to a circulating library.