When the notary had gone, Pécuchet sank into an armchair in a state of nervous prostration.
"We shouldn't have given back the bowl," said Bouvard; "but you get excited, and always lose your head."
"Yes, I do lose my head"; and Pécuchet, snatching up the soup-tureen, flung it some distance away from him against the sarcophagus.
Bouvard, more self-possessed, picked up the broken pieces one by one; and some time afterwards this idea occurred to him: "Marescot, through jealousy, might have been making fools of us!"
"How?"
"There's nothing to show me that the soup-tureen was not genuine! Whereas the other specimens which he pretended to admire are perhaps counterfeit."
And so the day closed with uncertainties and regrets.
This was no reason for abandoning their tour into Brittany.
They even purposed to take Gorju along with them to assist them in their excavations.
For some time past, he had slept at the house, in order to finish the more quickly the repairing of the chest.