"Why admit," objected Bouvard, "that fables are more true than the truths of historians?"
Pécuchet tried to explain myths, and got lost in the Scienza Nuova.
"Will you deny the design of Providence?"
"I don't know it!" said Bouvard. And they decided to refer to Dumouchel.
The professor confessed that he was now at sea on the subject of history.
"It is changing every day. There is a controversy as to the kings of Rome and the journeys of Pythagoras. Doubts have been thrown on Belisarius, William Tell, and even on the Cid, who has become, thanks to the latest discoveries, a common robber. It is desirable that no more discoveries should be made, and the Institute ought even to lay down a kind of canon prescribing what it is necessary to believe!"
In a postscript he sent them some rules of criticism taken from Daunou's course of lectures:
"To cite by way of proof the testimony of multitudes is a bad method of proof; they are not there to reply.
"To reject impossible things. Pausanias was shown the stone swallowed by Saturn.
"Architecture may lie: instance, the arch of the Forum, in which Titus is called the first conqueror of Jerusalem, which had been conquered before him by Pompey.