Gouttman, seeing him so accommodating, wanted the halberd in addition; Bouvard, tired of having exhibited its working, surrendered it. The entire valuation was made. “These gentlemen still owed a hundred francs.” It was settled by three bills payable at three months; and they congratulated themselves on a good bargain.
Their acquisitions were distributed through the various rooms. A crib filled with hay and a cork cathedral decorated the museum.
On Pécuchet’s chimney-piece there was a St. John the Baptist in wax; along the corridor were ranged the portraits of episcopal dignitaries; and at the bottom of the staircase, under a chained lamp, stood a Blessed Virgin in an azure mantle and a crown of stars. Marcel cleaned up those splendours, unable to imagine anything more beautiful in Paradise.
What a pity that the St. Peter was broken, and how nicely it would have done in the vestibule!
Pécuchet stopped sometimes before the old pit for composts, where he discovered the tiara, one sandal, and the tip of an ear; allowed sighs to escape him, then went on gardening, for now he combined manual labour with religious exercises, and dug the soil attired in the monk’s habit, comparing himself to Bruno. This disguise might be a sacrilege. He gave it up.
But he assumed the ecclesiastical style, no doubt owing to his intimacy with the curé. He had the same smile, the same tone of voice, and, like the priest too, he slipped both hands with a chilly air into his sleeves up to the wrists. A day came when he was pestered by the crowing of the cock and disgusted with the roses; he no longer went out, or only cast sullen glances over the fields.
Bouvard suffered himself to be led to the May devotions. The children singing hymns, the gorgeous display of lilacs, the festoons of verdure, had imparted to him, so to speak, a feeling of imperishable youth. God manifested Himself to his heart through the fashioning of nests, the transparency of fountains, the bounty of the sun; and his friend’s devotion appeared to him extravagant, fastidious.
“Why do you groan during mealtime?”
“We ought to eat with groans,” returned Pécuchet, “for it was in that way that man lost his innocence”—a phrase which he had read in the Seminarist’s Manual, two duodecimo volumes he had borrowed from M. Jeufroy: and he drank some of the water of La Salette, gave himself up with closed doors to ejaculatory prayers, and aspired to join the confraternity of St. Francis.
In order to obtain the gift of perseverance, he resolved to make a pilgrimage in honour of the Blessed Virgin. He was perplexed as to the choice of a locality. Should it be Nôtre Dame de Fourviers, de Chartres, d’Embrun, de Marseille, or d’Auray? Nôtre Dame de la Délivrande was nearer, and it suited just as well.