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A number of voices exclaimed "Bravo!" Then Marescot, to tease Madame Bordin, called on the spirit to declare her exact age. The foot of the table came down with five taps. "What? five years!" cried Girbal. "The tens don't count," replied Foureau. The widow smiled, though she was inwardly annoyed. The replies to the other questions were missing, so complicated was the alphabet.
"For my part," said Bouvard, "I used to pay for a seat in the pit sometimes at the Vaudeville to hear farces." Foureau asked Madame Bordin whether she liked farces. "That depends on what kind they are," she said. The mayor rallied her. She made sharp rejoinders to his pleasantries. Then she mentioned a recipe for preparing gherkins.
Bouvard and Pécuchet gave utterance on other occasions to their scandalous paradoxes. They threw doubt on the honesty of men, the chastity of women, the intelligence of government, the good sense of the people in short, they sapped the foundations of everything. Foureau was provoked by their behaviour, and threatened them with imprisonment if they went on with such discourses.
However, her talents for housekeeping were well known, and she had a little farm, which was admirably looked after. Foureau asked Bouvard, "Is it your intention to sell yours?" "Upon my word, up to this I don't know what to do exactly." "What! not even the Escalles piece?" interposed the notary. "That would suit you, Madame Bordin."
But his mother cried a great deal at his losing the breakfast, not to speak of the infliction of having made them come every day from Barneval to Chavignolles. Foureau calmed down, and Gouy recovered his strength. At the present moment the cure was certain. A success like this emboldened Pécuchet. "If we studied obstetrics with the aid of one of these manikins " "Enough of manikins!"
"Well, what about the abolition of the death-penalty in political cases?" "Faith," replied Foureau, "they would like to abolish everything. However, who knows? the tenants are already showing themselves very exacting." "So much the better! The proprietors," according to Pécuchet, "had been too much favoured. He that owns an estate "
The captain exclaimed: "You are revolutionaries!" Girbal: "Peace! peace!" The priest: "What materialism!" Foureau: "Let us rather occupy ourselves with our chasuble!" "No! let me speak!" And Bouvard, growing more heated, went on to say that man was descended from the ape! All the vestrymen looked at each other, much amazed, and as if to assure themselves that they were not apes.
Foureau was walking with his head down, between the notary and the innkeeper, irritated by the ceremony, as he was apprehensive of a riot; and instinctively he turned round towards Placquevent, who, together with the captain, gave vent to loud regrets at Girbal's unsatisfactoriness and the sorry appearance of his men.
Foureau, in order to make the experiment himself, would fain have seized the lancet, but the doctor having refused, he vigorously pinched the invalid. The captain tickled her nostrils with a feather; the tax-collector plunged a pin under her skin. "Let her alone now," said Vaucorbeil; "it is nothing astonishing, after all. Simply a hysterical female! The devil will have his pains for nothing."
"And yet," said Pécuchet, "peoples have a solidarity as well as men." "Perhaps so." And Bouvard sank into a reverie. The expedition to Rome soon began. At home, through hatred of revolutionary ideas, the leaders of the Parisian middle class got two printing-offices sacked. The great party of order was formed. It had for its chiefs in the arrondissement the count, Foureau, Marescot, and the curé.
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