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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.
The counter-espaliers were forbidden, and dead or fallen trees should not be replaced; but he was going to do a nasty job nothing less than to destroy all the others which remained standing. How was he to set about the work? Pécuchet made several diagrams, while using his mathematical case. Bouvard gave him advice. They arrived at no satisfactory result.
When spring had come, Pécuchet set about the pruning of pear trees. He did not cut down the shoots, spared the superfluous side branches, and, persisting in trying to lay the "duchesses" out in a square when they ought to go in a string on one side, he broke them or tore them down invariably.
Human testimonies! and consequently open to suspicion." Pécuchet reflected folded his arms. "But we are about to fall into the frightful abyss of scepticism." In Bouvard's opinion it frightened only weak brains. "Thank you for the compliment," returned Pécuchet. "However, there are indisputable facts. We can arrive at truth within a certain limit." "Which? Do two and two always make four?
As for the stick, Pécuchet freely adopted the tourist's stick, six feet high, with a long iron point. Bouvard preferred the walking-stick umbrella, or many-branched umbrella, the knob of which is removed in order to clasp on the silk, which is kept separately in a little bag.
In former times the towers, the pyramids, the wax tapers, the boundaries of roads, and even the trees had a phallic meaning. Bouvard and Pécuchet collected whipple-trees of carriages, legs of armchairs, bolts of cellars, apothecaries' pestles. When people came to see them they would ask, "What do you think that is like?" and then they would confide the secret.
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.
"Your Descartes is muddled, for he maintains that the foetus possesses them, and he confesses in another place that this is in an implied fashion." Pécuchet was astonished. "Where is this found?" "In Gérando." And Bouvard tapped him lightly on the stomach. "Make an end of it, then," said Pécuchet. Then, coming to Condillac: "'Our thoughts are not metamorphoses of sensation.
Ideas like this may pull down your pride." "What is the object of all this?" "Perhaps it has no object." "However " And Pécuchet repeated two or three times "however," without finding anything more to say. "No matter. I should very much like to know how the universe is made." "That should be in Buffon," returned Bouvard, whose eyes were closing. "I am not equal to any more of it.
"The theatre is an article of consumption like any other. It is advertised in the newspapers. We go to the theatre to be amused. The good thing is the thing that amuses." "But, idiot," exclaimed Pécuchet, "what amuses you is not what amuses me; and the others, as well as yourself, will be weary of it by and by.
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