This man was one of those tailors who go about mending clothes in farmhouses. He was taken into the house for a fortnight.
Hunchbacked, with bloodshot eyes, he made up for his bodily defects by a facetious disposition. While the masters were out, he used to amuse Marcel and Victorine by telling them funny stories. He would put out his tongue as far as his chin, imitate the cuckoo, or give exhibitions of ventriloquism; and at night, saving the cost of an inn, he went to sleep in the bakehouse.
Now, one morning, at a very early hour, Bouvard, being cold, happened to go there to get chips to light his fire.
What he saw petrified him. Behind the remains of the chest, upon a straw mattress, Romiche and Victorine lay asleep together.
He had passed his arm around her waist, and his other hand, long as that of an ape, clutched one of her knees. She was smiling, stretched on her back. Her fair hair hung loose, and the whiteness of the dawn threw its pale light upon the pair.
Bouvard for a moment felt as if he had received a blow in the chest; then a sense of shame prevented him from making a single movement. He was oppressed by painful reflections.
“So young! Lost! lost!” He then went to awaken Pécuchet, and briefly told him everything.
“Ah! the wretch!”
“We cannot help it. Be calm!” And for some time they remained sighing, one after the other—Bouvard, with his coat off and his arms folded; Pécuchet, at the side of his bed, sitting barefooted in a cotton nightcap.
Romiche should leave that very day, when his work was finished. They would pay him in a haughty fashion, and in silence.