The keeper made the busybodies take themselves off.
"Very well," said Bouvard; "we don't want anyone."
Foureau understood the allusion, and put it to them whether, not being medical men, they had the right to keep such an object in their possession. However, he was going to write to the prefect.
What a country district it was! There could be nothing more foolish, barbarous, and retrograde. The comparison which they instituted between themselves and the others consoled them—they felt a longing to suffer in the cause of science.
The doctor, too, came to see them. He disparaged the model as too far removed from nature, but took advantage of the occasion to give them a lecture.
Bouvard and Pécuchet were delighted; and at their request M. Vaucorbeil lent them several volumes out of his library, declaring at the same time that they would not reach the end of them. They took note of the cases of childbirth, longevity, obesity, and extraordinary constipation given in the Dictionary of Medical Sciences. Would that they had known the famous Canadian, De Beaumont, the polyphagi, Tarare and Bijou, the dropsical woman from the department of Eure, the Piedmontese who went every twenty days to the water-closet, Simon de Mirepoix, who was ossified at the time of his death, and that ancient mayor of Angoulême whose nose weighed three pounds!
The brain inspired them with philosophic reflections. They easily distinguished in the interior of it the septum lucidum, composed of two lamellæ, and the pineal gland, which is like a little red pea. But there were peduncles and ventricles, arches, columns, strata, ganglions, and fibres of all kinds, and the foramen of Pacchioni and the "body" of Paccini; in short, an inextricable mass of details, enough to wear their lives out.
Sometimes, in a fit of dizziness, they would take the figure completely to pieces, then would get perplexed about putting back each part in its proper place. This was troublesome work, especially after breakfast, and it was not long before they were both asleep, Bouvard with drooping chin and protruding stomach, and Pécuchet with his hands over his head and both elbows on the table.
Often at that moment M. Vaucorbeil, having finished his morning rounds, would open the door.
"Well, comrades, how goes anatomy?"