istory," exclaimed Pecuchet. "Recall to mind the
assassinations of kings, the massacres amongst peoples, the dissensions
in families, the affliction of individuals."

"And at the same time," added Bouvard, for they mutually excited each
other, "this Providence takes care of little birds, and makes the claws
of crayfishes grow again. Oh! if by Providence you mean a law which
rules everything, I am of the same opinion, and even more so."

"However, sir," said the notary, "there are principles."

"What stuff is that you're talking? A science, according to Condillac,
is so much the better the less need it has of them. They do nothing but
summarise acquired knowledge, and they bring us back to those
conceptions which are exactly the disputable ones."

"Have you, like us," went on Pecuchet, "scrutinised and explored the
arcana of metaphysics?"

"It is true, gentlemen--it is true!"

Then the company broke up.

But Coulon, drawing them aside, told them in a paternal tone that he was
no devotee certainly, and that he even hated the Jesuits. However, he
did not go as far as they did. Oh, no! certainly not. And at the corner
of the green they passed in front of the captain, who, as he lighted his
pipe, growled:

"All the same, I do what I like, by God!"

Bouvard and Pecuchet gave utterance on other occasions to their
scandalous paradoxes. They threw doubt on the honesty of men, the
chastity of women, the intelligence of government, the good sense of the
people--in short, they sapped the foundations of everything.

Foureau was provoked by their behaviour, and threatened them with
imprisonment if they went on with such discourses.

The evidence of their own superiority caused them pain. As they
maintained immoral propositions, they must needs be immoral: calumnies
were invented about them. Then a pitiable faculty developed itself in
their minds, that of observing stupidity and no longer tolerating it.
Trifling things made them feel sad: the advertisements in the
newspapers, the profile of a shopkeeper, an idiotic remark overheard by
chance. Thinking over what was said in their own village, and on the
fact that there were even as far as the Antipodes other Coulons, other
Marescots, other Foureaus, they felt, as it were, the heaviness of all
the earth weighing down upon them.

They no longer went out of doors, and received no visitors.

One afternoon a dialogue arose, outside the front entrance, between
Marcel and a ge