eir ease; and in spite of the customers and the loud
ringing of the bell, the gentlemen continued their discussion as to
Touache's offences.

"Goodness gracious!" said Bouvard, "he had bad instincts. That was the
whole of it!"

"They are conquered by virtue," replied the notary.

"But if a person has not virtue?"

And Bouvard positively denied free-will.

"Yet," said the captain, "I can do what I like. I am free, for instance,
to move my leg."

"No, sir, for you have a motive for moving it."

The captain looked out for something to say in reply, and found nothing.
But Girbal discharged this shaft:

"A Republican speaking against liberty. That is funny."

"A droll story," chimed in Langlois.

Bouvard turned on him with this question:

"Why don't you give all you possess to the poor?"

The grocer cast an uneasy glance over his entire shop.

"Look here, now, I'm not such an idiot! I keep it for myself."

"If you were St. Vincent de Paul, you would act differently, since you
would have his character. You obey your own. Therefore, you are not
free."

"That's a quibble!" replied the company in chorus.

Bouvard did not flinch, and said, pointing towards the scales on the
counter:

"It will remain motionless so long as each scale is empty. So with the
will; and the oscillation of the scales between two weights which seem
equal represents the strain on our mind when it is hesitating between
different motives, till the moment when the more powerful motive gets
the better of it and leads it to a determination."

"All that," said Girbal, "makes no difference for Touache, and does not
prevent him from being a downright vicious rogue."

Pecuchet addressed the company:

"Vices are properties of Nature, like floods, tempests."

The notary stopped, and raising himself on tiptoe at every word:

"I consider your system one of complete immorality. It gives scope to
every kind of excess, excuses crimes, and declares the guilty innocent."

"Exactly," replied Bouvard; "the wretch who follows his appetites is
right from his own point of view just as much as the honest man who
listens to reason."

"Do not defend monsters!"

"Wherefore monsters? When a person is born blind, an idiot, a homicide,
this appears to us to be opposed to order, as if order were known to us,
as if Nature were striving towards an end."

"You then raise a question about Providence?"

"I do raise a question about it."

"Look rather to h