Bouvard and Pecuchet Part 50

Bouvard from time to time walked towards the further end of the apartment and then came back. The torches and the pans on the walls threw slanting shadows on the ground; and the St. Peter, seen in profile, showed on the ceiling the silhouette of his nose, resembling a monstrous hunting-horn.

They found it hard to move about amongst the various articles, and Bouvard, by not taking precautions, often knocked against the statue.

With its big eyes, its drooping lip, and its air of a drunkard, it also annoyed Pecuchet. For a long time he had wished to get rid of it, but through carelessness put it off from day to day.

One evening, in the middle of a dispute on the monad, Bouvard hit his big toe against St. Peter's thumb, and turning on him in a rage, exclaimed:

"He plagues me, this jackanapes! Let us toss him out!"

It was difficult to do this over the staircase. They flung open the window, and gently tried to tip St. Peter over the edge. Pecuchet, on his knees, attempted to raise his heels, while Bouvard pressed against his shoulders. The old codger in stone did not budge. After this they had recourse to the halberd as a lever, and finally succeeded in stretching him out quite straight. Then, after a see-saw motion, he dashed into the open s.p.a.ce, his tiara going before him. A heavy crash reached their ears, and next day they found him broken into a dozen pieces in the old pit for composts.

An hour afterwards the notary came in, bringing good news to them. A lady in the neighbourhood was willing to advance a thousand crown-pieces on the security of a mortgage of their farm, and, as they were expressing their satisfaction at the proposal:

"Pardon me. She adds, as a condition, that you should sell her the Ecalles meadow for fifteen hundred francs. The loan will be advanced this very day. The money is in my office."

They were both disposed to give way.

Bouvard ended by saying: "Good G.o.d! be it so, then."

"Agreed," said Marescot. And then he mentioned the lender's name: it was Madame Bordin.

"I suspected 'twas she!" exclaimed Pecuchet.

Bouvard, who felt humiliated, had not a word to say.

She or some one else--what did it matter? The princ.i.p.al thing was to get out of their difficulties.

When they received the money (they were to get the sum for the Ecalles later) they immediately paid all their bills; and they were returning to their abode when, at the corner of the market-place, they were stopped by Farmer Gouy.

He had been on his way to their house to apprise them of a misfortune.

The wind, the night before, had blown down twenty apple trees into the farmyard, overturned the boilery, and carried away the roof of the barn.

They spent the remainder of the afternoon in estimating the amount of the damage, and they continued the inquiry on the following day with the a.s.sistance of the carpenter, the mason, and the slater. The repairs would cost at least about eighteen hundred francs.

Then, in the evening, Gouy presented himself. Marianne herself had, a short time before, told him all about the sale of the Ecalles meadow--a piece of land with a splendid yield, suitable in every way, and scarcely requiring any cultivation at all, the best bit in the whole farm!--and he asked for a reduction.

The two gentlemen refused it. The matter was submitted to the justice of the peace, who decided in favour of the farmer. The loss of the Ecalles, which was valued at two thousand francs per acre, caused him an annual depreciation of seventy, and he was sure to win in the courts.

Their fortune was diminished. What were they to do? And soon the question would be, How were they to live?

They both sat down to table full of discouragement. Marcel knew nothing about it in the kitchen. His dinner this time was better than theirs.

The soup was like dish-water, the rabbit had a bad smell, the kidney-beans were underdone, the plates were dirty, and at dessert Bouvard burst into a pa.s.sion and threatened to break everything on Marcel's head.

"Let us be philosophers," said Pecuchet. "A little less money, the intrigues of a woman, the clumsiness of a servant--what is it but this?

You are too much immersed in matter."

"But when it annoys me?" said Bouvard.

"For my part, I don't admit it," rejoined Pecuchet.

He had recently been reading an a.n.a.lysis of Berkeley, and added:

"I deny extension, time, s.p.a.ce, even substance! for the true substance is the mind-perceiving qualities."

"Quite so," said Bouvard; "but get rid of the world, and you'll have no proof left of G.o.d's existence."

Pecuchet uttered a cry, and a long one too, although he had a cold in his head, caused by the iodine of pota.s.sium, and a continual feverishness increased his excitement. Bouvard, being uneasy about him, sent for the doctor.

Vaucorbeil ordered orange-syrup with the iodine, and for a later stage cinnabar baths.

"What's the use?" replied Pecuchet. "One day or another the form will die out. The essence does not perish."

"No doubt," said the physician, "matter is indestructible. However----"

"Ah, no!--ah, no! The indestructible thing is being. This body which is there before me--yours, doctor--prevents me from knowing your real self, and is, so to speak, only a garment, or rather a mask."

Vaucorbeil believed he was mad.

"Good evening. Take care of your mask."

Pecuchet did not stop. He procured an introduction to the Hegelian philosophy, and wished to explain it to Bouvard.

"All that is rational is real. There is not even any reality save the idea. The laws of the mind are laws of the universe; the reason of man is identical with that of G.o.d."

Bouvard pretended to understand.

"Therefore the absolute is, at the same time, the subject and the object, the unity whereby all differences come to be settled. Thus, things that are contradictory are reconciled. The shadow permits the light; heat and cold intermingled produce temperature. Organism maintains itself only by the destruction of organism; everywhere there is a principle that disunites, a principle that connects."

They were on the hillock, and the cure was walking past the gateway with his breviary in his hand.

Pecuchet asked him to come in, as he desired to finish the explanation of Hegel, and to get some notion of what the cure would say about it.

The man of the ca.s.sock sat down beside them, and Pecuchet broached the question of Christianity.

"No religion has established this truth so well: 'Nature is but a moment of the idea.'"

"A moment of the idea!" murmured the priest in astonishment.

"Why, yes. G.o.d in taking a visible envelope showed his consubstantial union with it."

"With nature--oh! oh!"

"By His decease He bore testimony to the essence of death; therefore, death was in Him, made and makes part of G.o.d."

The ecclesiastic frowned.

"No blasphemies! it was for the salvation of the human race that He endured sufferings."