They only prided themselves the more upon it. They crowned themselves artists. Pécuchet wore moustaches, and Bouvard thought he could not do anything better, with his round face and his bald patch, than to give himself a head à la Béranger. Finally, they determined to write a play.
The subject was the difficulty. They searched for it while they were at breakfast, and drank coffee, a stimulant indispensable for the brain, then two or three little glasses. They would next take a nap on their beds, after which they would make their way down to the fruit garden and take a turn there; and at length they would leave the house to find inspiration outside, and, after walking side by side, they would come back quite worn out.
Or else they would shut themselves up together. Bouvard would sweep the table, lay down paper in front of him, dip his pen, and remain with his eyes on the ceiling; whilst Pécuchet, in the armchair, would be plunged in meditation, with his legs stretched out and his head down.
Sometimes they felt a shivering sensation, and, as it were, the passing breath of an idea, but at the very moment when they were seizing it, it had vanished.
But methods exist for discovering subjects. You take a title at random, and a fact trickles out of it. You develop a proverb; you combine a number of adventures so as to form only one. None of these devices came to anything. In vain they ran through collections of anecdotes, several volumes of celebrated trials, and a heap of historical works.
And they dreamed of being acted at the Odéon, had their thoughts fixed on theatrical performances, and sighed for Paris.
"I was born to be an author instead of being buried in the country!" said Bouvard.
"And I likewise," chimed in Pécuchet.
Then came an illumination to their minds. If they had so much trouble about it, the reason was their ignorance of the rules.
They studied them in the Pratique du Théâtre, by D'Aubignac, and in some works not quite so old-fashioned.