storical romances!"

[Illustration]

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 shines 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.

When they had breakfasted, they would instal themselves in the little
room, one at each side of the chimney-piece, and, facing each other,
book in hand, they would begin to read in silence. When the day wore
apace, they would go out for a walk along the road, then, having
snatched a hurried dinner, they would resume their reading far into the
night. In order to protect himself from the lamp, Bouvard wore blue
spectacles, while Pecuchet kept the peak of his cap drawn over his
forehead.

Germaine had not gone, and Gorju now and again came to dig in the
garden; for they had yielded through indifference, forgetful of material
things.

After Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas diverted them after the fashion of a
magic-lantern. His personages, active as apes, strong as bulls, gay as
chaffinches, enter on the scene and talk abruptly, jump off roofs to the
pavement, receive frightful wounds from which they recover, are believed
to be dead, and yet reappear. There are trap-doors under the boards,
antidotes, disguises; and all things get entangled, hurry along, and are
finally unravelled without a minute for reflection. Love observes the
proprieties, fanaticism is cheerful, and massacres excite a smile.

Rendered hard to please by these two masters, they could not tolerate
the balderdash of the _Belisaraire_, the foolery of the _Numa
Pompilius_, of Marchangy, and Vicomte d'Arlinc