plough when a
servant came to look for him, and told him that he was wanted at the
chateau.

His manager took his place--a man with a forbidding countenance and
obsequious manners.

He conducted "these gentlemen" to another field, where fourteen
harvesters, with bare breasts and legs apart, were cutting down rye. The
steels whistled in the chaff, which came pouring straight down. Each of
them described in front of him a large semicircle, and, all in a line,
they advanced at the same time. The two Parisians admired their arms,
and felt smitten with an almost religious veneration for the opulence of
the soil. Then they proceeded to inspect some of the ploughed lands. The
twilight was falling, and the crows swooped down into the ridges.

As they proceeded they met a flock of sheep pasturing here and there,
and they could hear their continual browsing. The shepherd, seated on
the stump of a tree, was knitting a woollen stocking, with his dog
beside him.

The manager assisted Bouvard and Pecuchet to jump over a wooden fence,
and they passed close to two orchards, where cows were ruminating under
the apple trees.

All the farm-buildings were contiguous and occupied the three sides of
the yard. Work was carried on there mechanically by means of a turbine
moved by a stream which had been turned aside for the purpose. Leathern
bands stretched from one roof to the other, and in the midst of dung an
iron pump performed its operations.

The manager drew their attention to little openings in the sheepfolds
nearly on a level with the floor, and ingenious doors in the pigsties
which could shut of their own accord.

The barn was vaulted like a cathedral, with brick arches resting on
stone walls.

In order to amuse the gentlemen, a servant-girl threw a handful of oats
before the hens. The shaft of the press appeared to them enormously big.
Next they went up to the pigeon-house. The dairy especially astonished
them. By turning cocks in the corners, you could get enough water to
flood the flagstones, and, as you entered, a sense of grateful coolness
came upon you as a surprise. Brown jars, ranged close to the barred
opening in the wall, were full to the brim of milk, while the cream was
contained in earthen pans of less depth. Then came rolls of butter, like
fragments of a column of copper, and froth overflowed from the tin pails
which had just been placed on the ground.

But the gem of the farm was the ox-stall. It was divide