Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pecuchet

Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pecuchet, Penguin, New York, 1976

Each took off his hat to mop his brow and put it beside him; and the smaller man noticed, written inside his neighbor’s hat, Bouvard; while the latter easily made out the word Pecuchet, in the cap belonging to the individual in the frock-coat. / ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we both had the same idea, writing our names inside our headgear.’ 21

Bouvard walked with long strides, while Pecuchet, with short, quick step, his frock-coat catching on his heels, seemed to glide on castors. Similarly their personal tastes were in harmony. Bouvard smoked a pipe, liked cheese, regularly took his cup of black coffee. Pecuchet took snuff, ate nothing but preserves for dessert and dipped a lump of sugar in his coffee. One was confident, thoughtless, generous; the other discreet, thoughtful, thrifty. 27

One Sunday they started walking in the morning and by way of Meudon, Bellevue, Suresnes, Auteuil, roamed about all day in vineyards, picked poppies from the edge of the fields, slept on the grass, drank milk, ate beneath the acacias of little inns, and came back very late, dusty, exhausted, delighted. They often repeated such excursions. They found the next day so dull that they finally gave them up. 29

He knew about their dream, and one fine day came to tell them that he had heard of an estate, at Chavignolles, between Caen and Falaise. It consisted of a farm of thirty-eight hectares, with a sort of manor house and a garden in full production. 33

When he approached (35) farms, dogs barked. He cried out with all his might to ask for directions. No one answered. He was afraid and went back into the open country. Suddenly two lanterns shone out. He saw a gig, and ran to meet it. Bouvard was aside. / But wherever could the removal van be? For a good hour they hailed it in the darkness. At last it turned up and they arrived at Chavignolles. / A great fire of brushwood and pine cones blazed in the main room. Two places were laid at the table. The furniture brought by the cart filled the vestibule. Nothing was missing. They sat down to talk. / The dinner prepared for them consisted of onion soup, a chicken, bacon and hard-boiled eggs. The old woman who did the cooking came from time to time to enquire how they found everything. They answered: ‘Oh, very good, very good!’ and the coarse bread, too hard to cut, the cream, the nuts, everything filled them with delight. There were holes in the flooring, the walls were sticky with damp. Yet they looked around them with a satisfied eye as they ate at the little table on which a candle burned. Their faces were flushed from the open air. They filled their bellies, leaned back on the backs of their chairs, making them crack, and kept saying to each other: ‘Well, here we are! Aren’t we lucky! It feels like a dream!’ 36

Then came the bad days, snow, bitter cold. They installed themselves in the kitchen, and made trellises; or perhaps inspected the bedrooms, chatted by the fireside, watched the rain come down. 40

A young girl, barefoot in her sandals, an din a dress so torn as to reveal her body, was giving the woman drinks, pouring out cider from a pitcher steadied against her hip. The count asked where the child came from; no one knew anything about it. The haymaking women had picked her up to serve them during the harvest. He shrugged his shoulders and, as he went off, made some critical remarks about rural immorality. 42

Bouvard tried to train the apricot trees. They rebelled. He cut their trunks down to ground level; none of them grew up again. The cherry trees, which he had notched, produced gum….They rose at dawn and worked on into the night, with a rush basket at their waist. In the chilly spring mornings Bouvard kept o his knitted waistcoat under his smock, Pecuchet his old coat under his overall, and people who passed along the fence heard them coughing in the mist. 54

Besides, her domestic talents were well-known, and she had an admirably well-kept little farm. / Foureau addressed Bouvard: ‘Do you intent to sell yours?’ / ‘My goodness, so far, I am not too sure…’ / ‘What, not even the bit at Les Ecalles?’ the lawyer went on; ‘It would just suit you, Madame Bordin.’ / The widow replied, simpering: ‘Monsieur Bouvard might be asking too much.’ / ‘Perhaps he could be softened up.’ / ‘I am not going to try!’ / ‘Oh, supposing you gave him a kiss?’ / ‘Let’s try, all the same,’ said Bouvard. / And he kissed her on both cheeks, amid general applause. / Almost immediately the champagne was opened, and the popping corks added further to the hilarity. Pecuchet gave a signal, the curtains parted and the garden appeared. 61

Suddenly, with a noise like a shell bursting, the still exploded into twenty pieces which shot up to the ceiling, breaking the sauce-pans, squashing the skimmers, shattering the glass; the coal scattered everywhere, the furnace was demolished, and next day Germaine found a spatula in the yard. / The pressure of the steam had broken the instrument, because the cucurbit was bolted to the top. / Pecuchet had at once crouched down behind the vat, and Bouvard had collapsed on a stool. For ten minutes they remained in these positioned, not daring to move a muscle, pale with terror, amid the shattered fragments. When they were capable of utterance, they (67) asked themselves the cause of so many misfortunes, especially this last one. It was all beyond their comprehension, except that they had nearly died. Pecuchet concluded with these words: / ‘Perhaps it is because we don’t know any chemistry!’ 68

How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorus like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like street lamps. / After colours and fats they came on to fermentation. / This led them on to acids, and the law of equivalents upset them once more. They tried to elucidate it with the theory of atoms, and then they were completely lost. / If they were to understand all that, according to Bouvard, they would need instruments. / 69 The expense was considerable, and they had spent too much. / But Dr Vaucorbeil could no doubt enlighten them. / They presented themselves during his consulting hours. / ‘Yes, gentlemen? What is wrong with you?’ / Pecuchet replied that they were not ill, and after explaining the purpose of their visit: ‘First we should like to know about superior atomicity.’ / The doctor went very red, then criticized them for wanting to learn chemistry. 70

They were seen running along the highway, wearing damp clothes in the heat of the sun. This was to check whether think is allayed by applying water to the epidermis. 74

On the principle that inflammation can be prevented by lowering temperatures, they treated a woman suffering from meningitis by hanging her from the ceiling in her chair and pushing her to and fro, until her husband arrived and threw them out. 79

In the coach Bouvard and Pecuchet made conversation with three peasants, two women and a seminarist, and did not hesitate to describe themselves as engineers. / They stopped before the harbour. They made for the cliff, and five minutes later skirted it to avoid a great pool of water advancing like a gulf in the middle of the shore. Then they saw an arcade opening onto a deep cave; it was sonorous, very light, like a church, with columns from top to bottom and a carpet of seaweed all along its floor. / This work of nature astonished them, and gave rise to lofty considerations about the origin of the world. 93

Geology is too defective! We hardly know more than a few parts of Europe. As for the rest, including the sea bed, we shall never know about it. / Finally Pecuchet uttered the word ‘mineral kingdom’. / ‘I don’t believe in it, this mineral kingdom! Since organic matter contributed to the formation of flint, chalk, perhaps gold! Weren’t diamonds once carbon? Coal a collection of vegetable matter? If you heat it up to I forget how many degrees you get sawdust, so that everything decays, crumbles, changes form. Creation is put together in such an elusive and transitory fashion; we should do better to take up something else!’ 99

The academician was annoyed, and did not answer any more, which made them very glad, for they had become very bored with the Druids. / If they did not know where they stood with ceramics and Celticism it was because they were ignorant of history, especially the history of France. 118

It was during the summer of 1845, in the garden, under the arbour, Pecuchet, with his feet up on a small seat, was reading aloud in his booming voice, tirelessly, only stopping to dip his fingers into his snuff-box. Bouvard was listening to him, pipe in mouth, legs apart, the top of his trousers undone. 119

Besides, dates are not always authentic. They learned in a school manual that Christ’s birth should be brought back five years earlier than is generally reckoned, that the Greeks had three ways of counting Olympiads, and the Latins eight ways of beginning the year. These were all so many occasions for error, apart from those resulting from different zodiacs, eras and calendars. / From carelessness about dates they passed on to contempt for facts. / What matters is the philosophy of history! 122

‘How many questions there are of a quite different importance, and how much more difficult!’ / From which they concluded the external facts are not everything. They must be completed by psychology. Without imagination history of defective— ‘Let’s send for some historical novels!’ [129, end of Chapter 4] First they read Walter Scott. / They were as surprised as if they had found a new world. / The men of the past who had been mere names or phantoms for them became living beings… 130

After lunch they installed themselves in the small living-room, at either side of the fireplace; facing each other, with book in hand, they would read silently. When dusk began to fall they would go for a walk along the highway, then dine in haste and continue their reading into the night. 130

After Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas entertained them to a kind of magic lantern show. 130

Balzac’s work filled them with wonder, being at once like a teeming Babylon and specks of dust under the microscope. The most ordinary things revealed new aspects. They had not suspected that modern life had such depths. / ‘What an observer!’ cried Bouvard. / ‘Personally I find him fanciful,’ Pecuchet finally said. ‘He believes in occult sciences, the monarchy, the nobility, is dazzled by scoundrels, shoves millions around like centimes, and his bourgeois are not bourgeois but supermen. Why inflate something that is flat and describe so many idiotic things! 133

But Bouvard looked at himself in the mirror. His cheeks still had their colour, his hair curled as it used to, not a tooth had gone, and at the idea that he might still be attractive, his youth returned. Madame Bordin rose up in his memory. She had made advances to him, the first time, when the ricks caught fire, the second at their dinner, then in the museum, during the declamation, and recently she had come without ill-feeling three Sundays running. So he went to see her, and went again, promising himself he would seduce her. / Ever since the day that Pecuchet had watched the young servant drawing water he spoke to her more often; and whether she was sweeping the corridor, hanging out the washing, turning the sauce-pans, he could not have enough of the pleasure of seeing her, surprising himself with his emotions, as during adolescence. He had the same fevers and languors, and was persecuted by the memory of Madame Castillon embracing Gorju. / He questioned Bouvard on the way libertines set about getting themselves women. / ‘You give them presents, take them out to restaurants.’ / ‘Very good! But then?’ / ‘Some pretend to faint, so that you carry them onto a sofa, others drop their handkerchief, the best ones openly give you a rendezvous.’ 176

The table, which was on castors, slid towards the right; the operators, without undoing their fingers, followed its movement; and of its own accord it made two more turns. Everyone was stupefied. / Then Monsieur Alfred said loud and clear: / ‘Spirit, how do you find my cousin?’ / The table, slowly oscillating, rapped nine times. / According to a placard, on which the number of strokes was translated into letters, that meant ‘charming’. Applause broke out. 187

They bribed Chamberlan, who secretly provided them with an old skull. A tailor made them two long black coats, with hoods, as on a monk’s habit. The Falaise coach brought them a long roll in an envelope. Then they set to work, one of them curious to carry it out, the other afraid to believe in it. 198 …They had even stuck a candle inside the skull, and its rays shone out through the two eye-sockets. / In the middle, on a foot-warmer, incense smoked. Bouvard stood behind; and Pecuchet, with his back to him, threw handfuls of sulphur into the hearth. 199 … It was their old servant who, spying on them through a crack in the partition, thought she had seen the devil, and was kneeling in the corridor repeatedly making the sign of the cross. / Any discussion was pointless. She left them that very evening, unwilling to serve such people any longer. 200

The aim of psychology is to study the facts taking place ‘in the heart of the self’. They are discovered by observation. / ‘Let us observe!’ And for two weeks, usually after lunch, they searched their consciousness, at random, hoping to make great discoveries, and made none, which greatly astonished them. 206

And they examined the question of suicide. / What is wrong with throwing off a crushing burden and committing an act that does nobody any harm? It is offended God, should we have such a power? It is not an act of cowardice, whatever people may say, and it is a fine piece of insolence to flout, even to one’s own detriment, what men esteem most. 219

The Gospel made their souls expand, dazzled them like sunshine. 222

In order to mortify himself, Pecuchet stopped his glass of spirits after meals, cut himself down to four pinches of snuff a day, left off his cap in the coldest weather. / One day Bouvard, who was tying up the vine, set a ladder against the wall of the terrace near the house, and unintentionally found himself looking into Pecuchet’s room. / 224 His friend, stripped to the waist, was gently beating his shoulders with the clothes-beater, then, warming to his task, took off his breeches, lashed his backside, and fell into a chair, out of breath. / Bouvard was disturbed as one is at discovering any mystery which is not meant to be detected. 225

In return for an income of 7,500 francs, Madam Bordin was proposing to Monsieur Bouvard that she should buy their farm. / She had had her eye on it since her youth, knew all its ins and outs, good and bad points; and this desire was eating away at her like a cancer. For the good lady, like any true Norman, cherished above all property, not so much for the sake of capital security as for the pleasure of treading on ground actually belonging to oneself. 231

Meditating on Christ’s Passion, Pecuchet worked himself up into a fervour of love. He would have liked to offer Christ his soul, others’ souls, the ecstasies, transports, illuminations of the saints, every creature, the whole universe. 232

It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols. If (234) thunder rumbles, picture to yourself the Last Judgment; faced with a cloudless sky, think of the sojourn of the blessed; say to yourself when you are out walking that every step brings you nearer death. Pecuchet observed this method. 234

‘Explain the Trinity to me,’ said Bouvard. / ‘With pleasure. Let us take a comparison: the three sides of a triangle, or rather our soul, which contains being, knowing, willing; what in man is called a faculty is in God a person. That is the mystery.’ / ‘But each of the three sides of the triangle is not the triangle; these three faculties of the soul do not make three souls, and your persons of the Trinity are three Gods.’ / ‘Blasphemy!’ / ‘Then there is only one person, one God, one substance affected in three ways!’ / ‘Let us worship without understanding,’ said the cure. 235