Victorine was, in fact, smitten with a fancy for Arnold, so nice did she think him, with his embroidered collar, his velvet jacket, and his well-scented hair; and she had been bringing bouquets to him up to the time when Zephyrin told about her.
What foolishness was exhibited regarding this adventure, the two children being perfectly innocent!
The two guardians thought Victor required a stirring amusement like hunting; this would lead to the expense of a gun, of a dog. They thought it better to fatigue him, in order to tame the exuberance of his animal spirits, and went in for coursing in the fields.
The young fellow escaped from them, although they relieved each other. They could do nothing more; and in the evening they had not the strength to hold up the newspaper.
Whilst they were waiting for Victor they talked to the passers-by, and through the sheer necessity of playing the pedagogue, they tried to teach them hygiene, deplored the injuries from floods and the waste of manures, thundered against such superstitions as leaving the skeleton of a blackbird in a barn, putting consecrated wood at the end of a stable and a bag of worms on the big toes of people suffering from fever.
They next took to inspecting wet nurses, and were incensed at their management of babies: some soaked them in gruel, causing them to die of exhaustion; others stuffed them with meat before they were six months old, and so they fell victims to indigestion; several cleaned them with their own spittle; all managed them barbarously.
When they saw over a door an owl that had been crucified, they went into the farmhouse and said:
“You are wrong; these animals live on rats and field-mice. There has been found in a screech-owl’s stomach a quantity of caterpillars’ larvæ.”
The country-folk knew them from having seen them, in the first place, as physicians, then searching for old furniture, and afterwards looking for stones; and they replied:
“Come, now, you pair of play-actors! don’t try to teach us.”