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Updated: June 13, 2025
Madame Bordin interrupted him: "We know what a Tartuffe is." Bouvard had wished for a robe for a certain passage. "I see only the monk's habit," said Pécuchet. "No matter; bring it here." He reappeared with it and a copy of Molière. The opening was tame, but at the place where Tartuffe caresses Elmire's knees, Pécuchet assumed the tone of a gendarme: "What is your hand doing there?"
Many times he even got up out of bed, and, putting on his boots without stockings, shivering in his shirt, he traversed the entire garden to throw his own counterpane over his hotbed frames. The melons ripened. Bouvard grinned when he saw the first of them. The second was no better; neither was the third.
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.
"Oh yes," said Herries with a sigh, "that is all right enough it all depends upon proportion; and the worst of all these discussions on points of art is that each person has to find his own standard one can't accept other people's standards. To me Bouvard et Pecuchet is a piece of almost flawless art it is there it lives and breathes.
By a magnanimity perhaps unexampled anywhere but at the Temple, the rivals of Mother Bouvard did not rebel at the preference accorded her; one of the neighbors, indeed, had the generosity to say, "So long as it is Mother Bouvard, and no other, who has this customer, it is very well: she has a family, and is the oldest inhabitant of the Temple, and an honor to it."
It had been raining a short time before, and the path through the beech grove not being dry enough, it was more convenient to return across the fields. Bouvard accompanied her into the garden, in order to open the gate for her. At first they walked past the trees cut like distaffs, without a word being spoken on either side.
Sometimes, in a fit of dizziness, they would take the figure completely to pieces, then would get perplexed about putting back each part in its proper place. This was troublesome work, especially after breakfast, and it was not long before they were both asleep, Bouvard with drooping chin and protruding stomach, and Pécuchet with his hands over his head and both elbows on the table.
The night had come, the wind was swelling; from time to time, a flake of fire passed across the black sky. Bouvard viewed the conflagration with tears in his eyes, which were veiled by his moist lids, and his whole face was swollen with grief. Madame Bordin, while playing with the fringes of her green shawl, called him "Poor Monsieur!" and tried to console him.
He expressed approval of the condemnation of the King, the most violent decrees, the worship of the Supreme Being. Bouvard preferred that of Nature. He would have saluted with pleasure the image of a big woman pouring out from her breasts to her adorers not water but Chambertin.
And their eyes wandered over heaps of stones for building, over the hideous water in which a truss of straw was floating, over a factory chimney rising towards the horizon. Sewers sent forth their poisonous exhalations. They turned to the opposite side; and they had in front of them the walls of the Public Granary. Bouvard persuaded him to put down his overcoat.
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