Bouvard and Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert (top ten books to read txt) 📕

"Let us catch the beast that cowers!
Soon the swift stag shall be ours!
Yes! the race shall soon be won,
Come, run! come, run! come, run!"[17]

And, panting more than hounds, they cheered each other on with the sounds of their voices.

One side of gymnastics excited their enthusiasm—its employment as a means of saving life. But they would have required children in order to learn how to carry them in sacks, and they begged the schoolmaster to furnish them with some. Petit objected that their families would be annoyed at it. They fell back on the succour of the wounded. One pretended to have swooned: the other rolled him away in a wheelbarrow with the utmost precaution.

As for military escalades, the author extols the ladder of Bois-Rosé, so called from the captain who surprised Fécamp in former days by climbing up the cliff.

In accordance with the engraving in the book, they trimmed a rope with little sticks and fixed it under the cart-shed. As soon as the first stick is bestridden and the third grasped, the limbs are thrown out in order that the second, which a moment before was against the chest, might be directly under the thighs. The climber then springs up and grasps the fourth, and so goes on.

In spite of prodigious strainings of the hips, they found it impossible to reach the second step. Perhaps there is less trouble in hanging on to stones with your hands, just as Bonaparte's soldiers did at the attack of Fort Chambray? and to make one capable of such an action, Amoros has a tower in his establishment.

The wall in ruins might do as a substitute for it. They attempted the assault with it. But Bouvard, having withdrawn his foot too quickly from a hole, got frightened, and was seized with dizziness.

Pécuchet blamed their method for it. They had neglected that which relates to the phalanxes, so that they should go back to first principles.

His exhortations were fruitless; and then, in his pride and presumption, he went in for stilts.

Nature seemed to have destined him for them, for he immediately made use of the great model with flat boards four feet from the ground, and, balanced thereon, he stalked over the garden like a gigantic stork taking exercise.

Bouvard, at the window, saw him stagger and then flop down all of a heap over the kidney-beans, whose props, giving way as he descended, broke his fall.

He was picked up covered with mould, his nostrils bleeding—livid; and he fancied that he had strained himself.

Decidedly, gymnastics did not agree with men of their age. They abandoned them, did not venture to move about any longer for fear of accidents, and they remained the whole day sitting in the museum dreaming of other occupations.

This change of habits had an influence on Bouvard's health. He became very heavy, puffed like a whale after his meals, tried to make himself thin, ate less, and began to grow weak.

Pécuchet, in like manner, felt himself "undermined," had itchings in his skin and lumps in his throat.

"This won't do," said they; "this won't do."

Bouvard thought of going to select at the inn some bottles of Spanish wine in order to put his bodily machinery in order.

As he was going out, Marescot's clerk and three men brought from Beljambe a large walnut table. "Monsieur" was much obliged to him for it. It had been conveyed in perfect order.

Bouvard in this way learned about the new fashion of table-turning. He joked about it with the clerk.

However, all over Europe, America, Australia and the Indies, millions of mortals passed their lives in making tables turn; and they discovered the way to make prophets of canaries, to give concerts without instruments, and to correspond by means of snails. The press, seriously offering these impostures to the public, increased its credulity.

The spirit-rappers had alighted at the château of Faverges, and thence had spread through the village; and the notary questioned them particularly.

Shocked at Bouvard's scepticism, he invited the two friends to an evening party at table-turning.

Was this a trap? Madame Bordin was to be there. Pécuchet went alone.

There were present as spectators the mayor, the tax-collector, the captain, other residents and their wives, Madame Vaucorbeil, Madame Bordin, of course, besides Mademoiselle Laverrière, Madame Marescot's former schoolmistress, a rather squint-eyed lady with her hair falling over her shoulders in the corkscrew fashion of 1830. In an armchair sat a cousin from Paris, attired in a blue coat and wearing an air of insolence.

The two bronze lamps, the whatnot containing a number of curiosities, ballads embellished with vignettes on the piano, and small water-colours in huge frames, had always excited astonishment in Chavignolles. But this evening all eyes were directed towards the mahogany table. They would test it by and by, and it had the importance of things which contain a mystery. A dozen guests took their places around it with outstretched hands and their little fingers touching one another. Only the ticking of the clock could be heard. The faces indicated profound attention. At the end of ten minutes several complained of tinglings in the arms.

Pécuchet was incommoded.

"You are pushing!" said the captain to Foureau.

"Not at all."

"Yes, you are!"

"Ah! sir."

The notary made them keep quiet.

By dint of straining their ears they thought they could distinguish cracklings of wood.

An illusion! Nothing had budged.

The other day when the Aubert and Lorraine families had come from Lisieux and they had expressly borrowed Beljambe's table for the occasion, everything had gone on so well. But this to-day exhibited a certain obstinacy. Why?

The carpet undoubtedly counteracted it, and they changed to the dining-room.

The round table, which was on rollers, glided towards the right-hand side. The operators, without displacing their fingers, followed its movements, and of its own accord it made two turns. They were astounded.

Then M. Alfred articulated in a loud voice:

"Spirit, how do you find my cousin?"

The table, slowly oscillating, struck nine raps. According to a slip of paper, in which the number of raps were translated by letters, this meant "Charming."

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.

Much better was the plane table—an expeditious medium of which Mademoiselle Laverrière had made use for the purpose of noting down in an album the direct communications of Louis XII., Clémence Isaure, Franklin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. These mechanical contrivances are sold in the Rue d'Aumale. M. Alfred promised one of them; then addressing the schoolmistress: "But for a quarter of an hour we should have a little music; don't you think so? A mazurka!"

Two metal chords vibrated. He took his cousin by the waist, disappeared with her, and came back again.

The sweep of her dress, which just brushed the doors as they passed, cooled their faces. She flung back her head; he curved his arms. The gracefulness of the one, the playful air of the other, excited general admiration; and, without waiting for the rout cakes, Pécuchet took himself off, amazed at the evening's exhibition.

In vain did he repeat: "But I have seen it! I have seen it!"

Bouvard denied the facts, but nevertheless consented to make an experiment himself.

For a fortnight they spent every afternoon facing each other, with their hands over a table, then over a hat, over a basket, and over plates. All these remained motionless.

The phenomenon of table-turning is none the less certain. The common herd attribute it to spirits; Faraday to prolonged nervous action; Chevreuil to unconscious efforts; or perhaps, as Segouin admits, there is evolved from the assembly of persons an impulse, a magnetic current.

This hypothesis made Pécuchet reflect. He took into his library the Magnetiser's Guide, by Montacabère, read it over