Bouvard was awakened by him one night.
“Are you unwell?”
Pécuchet stammered, “Haussmann prevents me from going to sleep.”
About this time he received a letter from Dumouchel to know the cost of sea-baths on the Norman coast.
“Let him go about his business with his baths! Have we any time to write?”
And, when they had procured a land-surveyor’s chain, a semicircle, a water-level, and a compass, they began at other studies.
They encroached on private properties. The inhabitants were frequently surprised to see the pair fixing stakes in the ground for surveying purposes. Bouvard and Pécuchet announced their plans, and what would be the outcome of them, with the utmost self-complacency. The people became uneasy, for, perchance, authority might at length fall in with these men’s views! Sometimes they rudely drove them away.
Victor scaled the walls and crept up to the roof to hang up signals there; he exhibited good-will, and even a degree of enthusiasm.
They were also better satisfied with Victorine.
When she was ironing the linen she hummed in a sweet voice as she moved her smoothing-iron over the board, interested herself in looking after the household, and made a cap for Bouvard, with a well-pointed peak that won compliments for her from Romiche.