In this reflective mood thoughts arose in their minds. They grasped at them, fearing to lose them; and metaphysics came back again—came back with respect to the rain and the sun, the gravel in their shoes, the flowers on the grass—with respect to everything. When they looked at the candle burning, they asked themselves whether the light is in the object or in our eyes. Since stars may have disappeared by the time their radiance has reached us, we admire, perhaps, things that have no existence.
Having found a Raspail cigarette in the depths of a waistcoat, they crumbled it over some water, and the camphor moved about. Here, then, is movement in matter. One degree more of movement might bring on life!
But if matter in movement were sufficient to create beings, they would not be so varied. For in the beginning lands, water, men, and plants had no existence. What, then, is this primordial matter, which we have never seen, which is no portion of created things, and which yet has produced them all?
Sometimes they wanted a book. Dumouchel, tired of assisting them, no longer answered their letters. They enthusiastically took up the new question, especially Pécuchet. His need of truth became a burning thirst.
Moved by Bouvard's preachings, he gave up spiritualism, but soon resumed it again only to abandon it once more, and, clasping his head with his hands, he would exclaim:
"Oh, doubt! doubt! I would much prefer nothingness."
Bouvard perceived the insufficiency of materialism, and tried to stop at that, declaring, however, that he had lost his head over it.
They began with arguments on a solid basis, but the basis gave way; and suddenly they had no longer a single idea—just as a bird takes wing the moment we wish to catch it.
During the winter evenings they chatted in the museum at the corner of the fire, staring at the coals. The wind, whistling in the corridor, shook the window-panes; the black masses of trees swayed to and fro, and the dreariness of the night intensified the seriousness of their thoughts.
Bouvard from time to time walked towards the further end of the apartment and then came back. The torches and the pans on the walls threw slanting shadows on the ground; and the St. Peter, seen in profile, showed on the ceiling the silhouette of his nose, resembling a monstrous hunting-horn.