f the lobster; the
fish-stew was unrecognisable; mushroom growths had sprouted over the
soup, and an intolerable smell tainted the laboratory.

Suddenly, with the noise of a bombshell, the still burst into twenty
pieces, which jumped up to the ceiling, smashing the pots, flattening
out the skimmers and shattering the glasses. The coal was scattered
about, the furnace was demolished, and next day Germaine found a spatula
in the yard.

The force of the steam had broken the instrument to such an extent that
the cucurbit was pinned to the head of the still.

Pecuchet immediately found himself squatted behind the vat, and Bouvard
lay like one who had fallen over a stool. For ten minutes they remained
in this posture, not daring to venture on a single movement, pale with
terror, in the midst of broken glass. When they were able to recover the
power of speech, they asked themselves what was the cause of so many
misfortunes, and of the last above all? And they could understand
nothing about the matter except that they were near being killed.
Pecuchet finished with these words:

"It is, perhaps, because we do not know chemistry!"

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.

AMATEUR CHEMISTS.

In order to understand chemistry they procured Regnault's course of
lectures, and were, in the first place, informed that "simple bodies are
perhaps compound." They are divided into metalloids and metals--a
difference in which, the author observes, there is "nothing absolute."
So with acids and bases, "a body being able to behave in the manner of
acids or of bases, according to circumstances."

The notation appeared to them irregular. The multiple proportions
perplexed Pecuchet.

"Since one molecule of _a_, I suppose, is combined with several
particles of _b_, it seems to me that this molecule ought to be divided
into as many particles; but, if it is divided, it ceases to be unity,
the primordial molecule. In short, I do not understand."

"No more do I," said Bouvard.

And they had recourse to a work less difficult, that of Girardin, from
which they acquired the certainty that ten litres of air weigh a hundred
grammes, that lead does not go into pencils, and that the diamond is
only carbon.

What amazed them above all is that the earth, as an element, does not
exist.

They grasped the working of straw, gold, silver, the lye-washing of
linen, the tinning of saucepans; then, without the least scruple,
Bouvard and Pecuchet launch