aight (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: "