“Are you crazy with your cocoanut? Blows only brutalise; terror enervates. You are disgracing yourself!”
Pécuchet returned that corporal chastisements were sometimes indispensable. Pestalozzi made use of them; and the celebrated Melancthon confesses that without them he would have learned nothing.
His friend observed that cruel punishments, on the other hand, had driven children to suicide. He had in his reading found examples of it.
Victor had barricaded himself in his room.
Bouvard parleyed with him outside the door, and, to make him open it, promised him a plum tart.
From that time he grew worse.
There remained a method extolled by Monseigneur Dupanloup: “the severe look.” They tried to impress on their countenances a dreadful expression, and they produced no effect.
“We have no longer any resource but to try religion.”
Pécuchet protested. They had banished it from their programme.
But reasoning does not satisfy every want. The heart and the imagination desire something else. The supernatural is for many souls indispensable. So they resolved to send the children to catechism.