ous, asked her for something for his rheumatism.

Pecuchet placed his right hand in Victoire's left, and, with her lids
closed uninterruptedly, her cheeks a little red, her lips quivering, the
somnambulist, after some rambling utterances, ordered _valum becum_.

She had assisted in an apothecary's shop at Bayeux. Vaucorbeil drew the
inference that what she wanted to say was _album Graecum_ a term which is
to be found in pharmacy.

Then they accosted Pere Lemoine, who, according to Bouvard, could see
objects through opaque bodies. He was an ex-schoolmaster, who had sunk
into debauchery. White hairs were scattered about his face, and, with
his back against the tree and his palms open, he was sleeping in the
broad sunlight in a majestic fashion.

The physician drew over his eyes a double neckcloth; and Bouvard,
extending a newspaper towards him, said imperiously:

"Read!"

He lowered his brow, moved the muscles of his face, then threw back his
head, and ended by spelling out:

"Cons-ti-tu-tion-al."

But with skill the muffler could be slipped off!

These denials by the physician roused Pecuchet's indignation. He even
ventured to pretend that La Barbee could describe what was actually
taking place in his own house.

"May be so," returned the doctor.

Then, taking out his watch:

"What is my wife occupying herself with?"

For a long time La Barbee hesitated; then with a sullen air:

"Hey! what? I am there! She is sewing ribbons on a straw hat."

Vaucorbeil snatched a leaf from his note-book and wrote a few lines on
it, which Marescot's clerk hastened to deliver.

The _seance_ was over. The patients went away.

Bouvard and Pecuchet, on the whole, had not succeeded. Was this due to
the temperature, or to the smell of tobacco, or to the Abbe Jeufroy's
umbrella, which had a lining of copper, a metal unfavourable to the
emission of the fluid?

Vaucorbeil shrugged his shoulders. However, he could not deny the
honesty of MM. Deleuze, Bertrand, Morin, Jules Cloquet. Now these
masters lay down that somnambulists have predicted events, and submitted
without pain to cruel operations.

The abbe related stories more astonishing. A missionary had seen
Brahmins rushing, heads down, through a street; the Grand Lama of Thibet
rips open his bowels in order to deliver oracles.

"Are you joking?" said the physician.

"By no means."

"Come, now, what tomfoolery that is!"

And the question being dropped, each of them