ntleman who wore dark spectacles and a hat with a large
brim. It was the academician Larsoneur. He observed a curtain
half-opening and doors being shut. This step on his part was an attempt
at reconciliation; and he went away in a rage, directing the man-servant
to tell his masters that he regarded them as a pair of common fellows.

Bouvard and Pecuchet did not care about this. The world was diminishing
in importance, and they saw it as if through a cloud that had descended
from their brains over their eyes.

Is it not, moreover, an illusion, a bad dream? Perhaps, on the whole,
prosperity and misfortune are equally balanced. But the welfare of the
species does not console the individual.

"And what do others matter to me?" said Pecuchet.

His despair afflicted Bouvard. It was he who had brought his friend to
this pass, and the ruinous condition of their house kept their grief
fresh by daily irritations.

In order to revive their spirits they tried discussions, and prescribed
tasks for themselves, but speedily fell back into greater sluggishness,
into more profound discouragement.

At the end of each meal they would remain with their elbows on the table
groaning with a lugubrious air.

Marcel would give them a scared look, and then go back to his kitchen,
where he stuffed himself in solitude.

About the middle of midsummer they received a circular announcing the
marriage of Dumouchel with Madame Olympe-Zulma Poulet, a widow.

"God bless him!"

And they recalled the time when they were happy.

Why were they no longer following the harvesters? Where were the days
when they went through the different farm-houses looking everywhere for
antiquities? Nothing now gave them such hours of delight as those which
were occupied with the distillery and with literature. A gulf lay
between them and that time. It was irrevocable.

They thought of taking a walk as of yore through the fields, wandered
too far, and got lost. The sky was dotted with little fleecy clouds, the
wind was shaking the tiny bells of the oats; a stream was purling along
through a meadow--and then, all at once, an infectious odour made them
halt, and they saw on the pebbles between the thorn trees the putrid
carcass of a dog.

The four limbs were dried up. The grinning jaws disclosed teeth of ivory
under the bluish lips; in place of the stomach there was a mass of
earth-coloured flesh which seemed to be palpitating with the vermin that
swarmed all ov