Bouvard and Pecuchet Part 25

"What is it now? You are always prodding at me with your questions!"

It was clear that Madame Bordin had been putting some to her in their absence.

Germaine got out of her torpor, and complained of indigestion.

"I am remaining to take care of you," said the widow.

Then they perceived in the courtyard a big cap, the lappets of which were fluttering. It was Madame Castillon, proprietress of a neighbouring farm. She was calling out: "Gorju! Gorju!"

And from the corn-loft the voice of their little servant-maid answered loudly:

"He is not there!"

At the end of five minutes she came down, with her cheeks flushed and looking excited. Bouvard and Pecuchet reprimanded her for having been so slow. She unfastened their gaiters without a murmur.

Then they went to look at the chest. The bakehouse was covered with its scattered fragments; the carvings were damaged, the leaves broken.

At this sight, in the face of this fresh disaster, Bouvard had to keep back his tears, and Pecuchet got a fit of nervous s.h.i.+vering.

Gorju, making his appearance almost immediately, explained the matter.

He had just put the chest outside in order to varnish it, when a wandering cow knocked it down on the ground.

"Whose cow?" said Pecuchet.

"I don't know."

"Ah! you left the door open, as you did some time ago. It is your fault."

At any rate, they would have nothing more to do with him. He had been trifling with them too long, and they wanted no more of him or his work.

"These gentlemen were wrong. The damage was not so great. It would be all settled before three weeks." And Gorju accompanied them into the kitchen, where Germaine was seen dragging herself along to see after the dinner.

They noticed on the table a bottle of Calvados, three quarters emptied.

"By you, no doubt," said Pecuchet to Gorju.

"By me! never!"

Bouvard met his protest by observing:

"You are the only man in the house."

"Well, and what about the women?" rejoined the workman, with a side wink.

Germaine caught him up:

"You'd better say 'twas I!"

"Certainly it was you."

"And perhaps 'twas I smashed the press?"

Gorju danced about.

"Don't you see that she's drunk?"

Then they squabbled violently with each other, he with a pale face and a biting manner, she purple with rage, tearing tufts of grey hair from under her cotton cap. Madame Bordin took Germaine's part, while Melie took Gorju's.

The old woman burst out:

"Isn't it an abomination that you two should be spending days together in the grove, not to speak of the nights?--a sort of Parisian, eating up honest women, who comes to our master's house to play tricks on them!"

Bouvard opened his eyes wide.

"What tricks?"

"I tell you he's making fools of you!"

"n.o.body can make a fool of me!" exclaimed Pecuchet, and, indignant at her insolence, exasperated by the mortification inflicted on him, he dismissed her, telling her to go and pack. Bouvard did not oppose this decision, and they went out, leaving Germaine in sobs over her misfortune, while Madame Bordin was trying to console her.

In the course of the evening, as they grew calmer, they went over these occurrences, asked themselves who had drunk the Calvados, how the chest got broken, what Madame Castillon wanted when she was calling Gorju, and whether he had dishonoured Melie.

"We are not able to tell," said Bouvard, "what is happening in our own household, and we lay claim to discover all about the hair and the love affairs of the Duke of Angouleme."

Pecuchet added: "How many questions there are in other respects important and still more difficult!"

Whence they concluded that external facts are not everything. It is necessary to complete them by means of psychology. Without imagination, history is defective.

"Let us send for some historical romances!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER V.

ROMANCE AND THE DRAMA.

They first read Walter Scott.

It was like the surprise of a new world.

The men of the past who had for them been only phantoms or names, became living beings, kings, princes, wizards, footmen, gamekeepers, monks, gipsies, merchants, and soldiers, who deliberate, fight, travel, trade, eat and drink, sing and pray, in the armouries of castles, on the blackened benches of inns, in the winding streets of cities, under the sloping roofs of booths, in the cloisters of monasteries. Landscapes artistically arranged formed backgrounds for the narratives, like the scenery of a theatre. You follow with your eyes a horseman galloping along the strand; you breathe amid the heather the freshness of the wind; the moon s.h.i.+nes on the lake, over which a boat is skimming; the sun glitters on the breast-plates; the rain falls over leafy huts.

Without having any knowledge of the models, they thought these pictures lifelike and the illusion was complete.

And so the winter was spent.