Bouvard and Pecuchet by Gustave Flaubert

Author:Gustave Flaubert [Flaubert, Gustave]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Norton
Published: 2005-11-29T23:00:00+00:00

Seven

THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED were filled with gloom.

They no longer studied for fear of disappointments. The people of Chavignolles avoided them, the few newspapers they could tolerate told them nothing—and their solitude was profound, their idleness complete.

Sometimes they opened a book, only to close it again: what was the point? On other days, they thought about cleaning the garden, but were overcome by fatigue after fifteen minutes; or looking in on the farm, but came back disgusted; or doing some work around the house, until Germaine wailed at them. They gave up.

Bouvard started drawing up a catalogue of the museum, only to declare that their knickknacks were stupid. Pécuchet borrowed Langlois’s punt gun to hunt meadowlarks; the explosion from the first shot nearly killed him.

And so they lived in the boredom of the country, which can weigh so heavily when the monotonous white sky crushes a heart devoid of hope. You listen to the sound of clogs walking past the wall, or of droplets of rain falling from the roof to the ground. Now and then a dead leaf brushes against the windowpane, twists around, blows away. A faint knell is carried by the wind. In the depths of the stable, a cow lows.

They yawned in each other’s faces, checked the calendar, watched the pendulum, waited for mealtimes; and the horizon never changed! Fields straight ahead, the church at right, a curtain of poplars at left. Their tips waved constantly in the mist, looking pitiful.

Idiosyncrasies that they once tolerated now bothered them. Pécuchet became annoying with his habit of putting his handkerchief on the tablecloth. Bouvard never put down his pipe, and yammered on while waddling about. Arguments arose over the preparation of certain dishes or the quality of the butter. When they conversed, they had other things on their minds.

One incident had profoundly upset Pécuchet.

Two days after the riot in Chavignolles, as he was walking off his political embarrassment, he had come to a path shrouded in leafy elms. Behind his back he heard a voice cry out, “Stop!”

It was Mme. Castillon. She was running along the opposite side and didn’t see him. A man walking in front of her turned around. It was Gorgu—and they met up a few yards away from Pécuchet; only the row of trees separated them from him.

“Is it true?” she said. “Are you going off to fight?”

Pécuchet slid down into the ditch to listen.

“Well, sure I am!” answered Gorgu. “I’m going off to fight. What’s it to you!”

“How can you ask me that!” she cried, wringing her arms. “What if you’re killed, my darling? Oh, stay with me!” And her blue eyes implored him even more urgently than her words.

“Leave me alone! I have to go!”

She gave a bitter snicker. “I suppose she said it was okay!”

“You don’t talk about her!” He raised his clenched fist.

“No, my friend, no! I’ll be quiet, I won’t say a word.” And fat tears rolled down her cheeks and into the ruffles of her collaret.

It was noon. The sun shone on a landscape covered in golden wheat.

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