The two comrades had not given the Abbé Jeufroy such a fall as they expected; therefore, Pécuchet found in him "the stamp of Jesuitism." His "boreal light," however, caused them uneasiness. They searched for it in Orbigny's manual.
"This is a hypothesis to explain why the vegetable fossils of Baffin's Bay resemble the Equatorial plants. We suppose, in place of the sun, a great luminous source of heat which has now disappeared, and of which the Aurora Borealis is but perhaps a vestige."
Then a doubt came to them as to what proceeds from man, and, in their perplexity, they thought of Vaucorbeil.
He had not followed up his threats. As of yore, he passed every morning before their grating, striking all the bars with his walking-stick one after the other.
Bouvard watched him, and, having stopped him, said he wanted to submit to him a curious point in anthropology.
"Do you believe that the human race is descended from fishes?"
"What nonsense!"
"From apes rather—isn't that so?"
"Directly, that is impossible!"
On whom could they depend? For, in fact, the doctor was not a Catholic!