Bouvard and Pecuchet Part 10

The skeleton astonished them by the prominence of the jawbone, the holes for the eyes, and the frightful length of the hands.

They stood in need of an explanatory work. They returned to M.

Vaucorbeil's residence, and, thanks to the manual of Alexander Lauth, they learned the divisions of the frame, wondering at the backbone, sixteen times stronger, it is said, than if the Creator had made it straight (why sixteen times exactly?). The metacarpals drove Bouvard crazy; and Pecuchet, who was in a desperate state over the cranium, lost courage before the sphenoid, although it resembles a Turkish or "Turkesque" saddle.

As for the articulations, they were hidden under too many ligaments; so they attacked the muscles. But the insertions were not easily discovered; and when they came to the vertebral grooves they gave it up completely.

Then Pecuchet said:

"If we took up chemistry again, would not this be only utilising the laboratory?"

Bouvard protested, and he thought he had a recollection of artificial corpses being manufactured according to the custom of hot countries.

Barberou, with whom he communicated, gave him some information about the matter. For ten francs a month they could have one of the manikins of M.

Auzoux; and the following week the carrier from Falaise deposited before their gate an oblong box.

Full of emotion, they carried it into the bakehouse. When the boards were unfastened, the straw fell down, the silver paper slipped off, and the anatomical figure made its appearance.

It was brick-coloured, without hair or skin, and variegated with innumerable strings, red, blue, and white. It did not look like a corpse, but rather like a kind of plaything, very ugly, very clean, and smelling of varnish.

They next took off the thorax; and they perceived the two lungs, like a pair of sponges, the heart like a big egg, slightly sidewise behind the diaphragm, the kidneys, the entire bundle of entrails.

"To work!" said Pecuchet. The day and the evening were spent at it. They had put blouses on, just as medical students do in the dissecting-rooms; and, by the light of three candles, they were working at their pieces of pasteboard, when a fist knocked at the door.

"Open!"

It was M. Foureau, followed by the keeper.

Germaine's masters were pleased to show him the manikin. She had rushed immediately to the grocer's shop to tell the thing, and the whole village now imagined that they had a real corpse concealed in their house. Foureau, yielding to the public clamour, had come to make sure about the fact. A number of persons, anxious for information, stood outside the porch.

When he entered, the manikin was lying on its side, and the muscles of the face, having been loosened, caused a monstrous protrusion, and looked frightful.

"What brings you here?" said Pecuchet.

Foureau stammered: "Nothing, nothing at all." And, taking up one of the pieces from the table, "What is this?"

"The buccinator," replied Bouvard.

Foureau said nothing, but smiled in a sly fashion, jealous of their having an amus.e.m.e.nt which he could not afford.

The two anatomists pretended to be pursuing their investigations. The people outside, getting bored with waiting, made their way into the bakehouse, and, as they began pushing one another a little, the table shook.

"Ah! this is too annoying," exclaimed Pecuchet. "Let us be rid of the public!"

The keeper made the busybodies take themselves off.

"Very well," said Bouvard; "we don't want anyone."

Foureau understood the allusion, and put it to them whether, not being medical men, they had the right to keep such an object in their possession. However, he was going to write to the prefect.

What a country district it was! There could be nothing more foolish, barbarous, and retrograde. The comparison which they inst.i.tuted between themselves and the others consoled them--they felt a longing to suffer in the cause of science.

The doctor, too, came to see them. He disparaged the model as too far removed from nature, but took advantage of the occasion to give them a lecture.

Bouvard and Pecuchet were delighted; and at their request M. Vaucorbeil lent them several volumes out of his library, declaring at the same time that they would not reach the end of them. They took note of the cases of childbirth, longevity, obesity, and extraordinary constipation given in the _Dictionary of Medical Sciences_. Would that they had known the famous Canadian, De Beaumont, the polyphagi, Tarare and Bijou, the dropsical woman from the department of Eure, the Piedmontese who went every twenty days to the water-closet, Simon de Mirepoix, who was ossified at the time of his death, and that ancient mayor of Angouleme whose nose weighed three pounds!

The brain inspired them with philosophic reflections. They easily distinguished in the interior of it the _septum lucidum_, composed of two lamellae, and the pineal gland, which is like a little red pea. But there were peduncles and ventricles, arches, columns, strata, ganglions, and fibres of all kinds, and the foramen of Pacchioni and the "body" of Paccini; in short, an inextricable ma.s.s of details, enough to wear their lives out.

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 Pecuchet with his hands over his head and both elbows on the table.

Often at that moment M. Vaucorbeil, having finished his morning rounds, would open the door.

"Well, comrades, how goes anatomy?"

"Splendidly," they would answer.

Then he would put questions to them, for the pleasure of confusing them.

When they were tired of one organ they went on to another, in this way taking up and then throwing aside the heart, the stomach, the ear, the intestines; for the pasteboard manikin bored them to death, despite their efforts to become interested in him. At last the doctor came on them suddenly, just as they were nailing him up again in his box.

"Bravo! I expected that."

At their age they could not undertake such studies; and the smile that accompanied these words wounded them deeply.

What right had he to consider them incapable? Did science belong to this gentleman, as if he were himself a very superior personage? Then, accepting his challenge, they went all the way to Bayeux to purchase books there. What they required was physiology, and a second-hand bookseller procured for them the treatises of Richerand and Adelon, celebrated at the period.

All the commonplaces as to ages, s.e.xes, and temperaments appeared to them of the highest importance. They were much pleased to learn that there are in the tartar of the teeth three kinds of animalcules, that the seat of taste is in the tongue, and the sensation of hunger in the stomach.

In order to grasp its functions better, they regretted that they had not the faculty of ruminating, as Montegre, M. Gosse, and the brother of Gerard had; and they masticated slowly, reduced the food to pulp, and insalivated it, accompanying in thought the alimentary ma.s.s pa.s.sing into their intestines, and following it with methodical scrupulosity and an almost religious attention to its final consequences.

In order to produce digestion artificially, they piled up meat in a bottle, in which was the gastric juice of a duck, and they carried it under their armpits for a fortnight, without any other result save making their persons smell unpleasantly. You might have seen them running along the high-road in wet clothes under a burning sun. This was for the purpose of determining whether thirst is quenched by the application of water to the epidermis. They came back out of breath, both of them having caught cold.

Experiments in hearing, speech, and vision were then made in a lively fashion; but Bouvard made a show-off on the subject of generation.

Pecuchet's reserve with regard to this question had always surprised him. His friend's ignorance appeared to him so complete that Bouvard pressed him for an explanation, and Pecuchet, colouring, ended by making an avowal.

Some rascals had on one occasion dragged him into a house of ill-fame, from which he made his escape, preserving himself for the woman whom he might fall in love with some day. A fortunate opportunity had never come to him, so that, what with bashfulness, limited means, obstinacy, the force of custom, at fifty-two years, and in spite of his residence in the capital, he still possessed his virginity.

Bouvard found difficulty in believing it; then he laughed hugely, but stopped on perceiving tears in Pecuchet's eyes--for he had not been without attachments, having by turns been smitten by a rope-dancer, the sister-in-law of an architect, a bar-maid, and a young washerwoman; and the marriage had even been arranged when he had discovered that she was _enceinte_ by another man.

Bouvard said to him:

"There is always a way to make up for lost time. Come--no sadness! I will take it on myself, if you like."

Pecuchet answered, with a sigh, that he need not think any more about it; and they went on with their physiology.

Is it true that the surfaces of our bodies are always letting out a subtle vapour? The proof of it is that the weight of a man is decreasing every minute. If each day what is wanting is added and what is excessive subtracted, the health would be kept in perfect equilibrium. Sanctorius, the discoverer of this law, spent half a century weighing his food every day together with its excretions, and took the weights himself, giving himself no rest, save for the purpose of writing down his computations.

They tried to imitate Sanctorius; but, as their scales could not bear the weight of both of them, it was Pecuchet who began.