uche
de bois sec_, or _de bois seche_?--_ne pas laisser de_, or _que
de_?--_une troupe de voleurs survint_, or _survinrent_?

Other difficulties: _Autour_ and _a l'entour_ of which Racine and
Boileau did not see the difference; _imposer_, or _en imposer_,
synonyms with Massillon and Voltaire; _croasser_ and _coasser_,
confounded by La Fontaine, who knew, however, how to distinguish a crow
from a frog.

The grammarians, it is true, are at variance. Some see a beauty where
others discover a fault. They admit principles of which they reject the
consequences, announce consequences of which they repudiate the
principles, lean on tradition, throw over the masters, and adopt
whimsical refinements.

Menage, instead of _lentilles_ and _cassonade_, approves of _nentilles_
and _castonade_; Bonhours, _jerarchie_ and not _hierarchie_ and M.
Chapsal speaks of _les oeils de la soupe_.

Pecuchet was amazed above all at Jenin. What! _z'annetons_ would be
better than _hannetons_, _z'aricots_ than _haricots_! and, under Louis
XIV., the pronunciation was _Roume_ and _Monsieur de Lioune_, instead of
_Rome_ and _Monsieur de Lionne_!

Littre gave them the finishing stroke by declaring that there never had
been, and never could be positive orthography. They concluded that
syntax is a whim and grammar an illusion.

At this period, moreover, a new school of rhetoric declared that we
should write as we speak, and that all would be well so long as we felt
and observed.

As they had felt and believed that they had observed, they considered
themselves qualified to write. A play is troublesome on account of the
narrowness of its framework, but the novel has more freedom. In order to
write one they searched among their personal recollections.

Pecuchet recalled to mind one of the head-clerks in his own office, a
very nasty customer, and he felt a longing to take revenge on him by
means of a book.

Bouvard had, at the smoking saloon, made the acquaintance of an old
writing-master, who was a miserable drunkard. Nothing could be so
ludicrous as this character.

At the end of the week, they imagined that they could fuse these two
subjects into one. They left off there, and passed on to the following:
a woman who causes the unhappiness of a family; a wife, her husband, and
her lover; a woman who would be virtuous through a defect in her
conformation; an ambitious man; a bad priest. They tried to bind
together with these vague conceptions thin