Bouvard and Pécuchet, part 2

He learned, however, that there is an active purgation and a passive purgation, an internal vision and an external vision, four kinds of prayers, nine excellencies in love, six degrees in humility, and that the wounding of the soul is not very different from spiritual theft.

Some points embarrassed him.

“Since the flesh is accursed, how is it that we are bound to thank God for the boon of existence?” “What proportion must be observed between the fear indispensable to the salvation and the hope which is no less so?” “Where is the sign of grace?” etc.

M. Jeufroy’s answers were simple.

“Don’t worry yourself. By desiring to sift everything we rush along a perilous slope.”

The Catechism of Perseverance, by Gaume, had disgusted Pécuchet so much that he took up Louis Hervieu’s book. It was a summary of modern exegesis, prohibited by the government. Barberou, as a republican, had bought the book.

It awakened doubts in Bouvard’s mind, and, first of all, on original sin. “If God had created man peccable, He ought not to punish him; and evil is anterior to the Fall, since there were already volcanoes and wild beasts. In short, this dogma upsets my notions of justice.”

“What would you have?” said the curé. “It is one of those truths about which everybody is agreed, without being able to furnish proofs of it; and we ourselves make the crimes of their fathers rebound on the children. Thus morality and law justify this decree of Providence, since we find it in nature.”

Bouvard shook his head. He had also doubts about hell.

“For every punishment should look to the amelioration of the guilty person, which is impossible where the penalty is eternal; and how many are enduring it? Just think! All the ancients, the Jews, the Mussulmans, the idolaters, the heretics, and the children who have died without baptism – those children created by God, and for what end? – for the purpose of being punished for a sin which they did not commit!”

“Such is St. Augustine’s opinion,” added the curé; “and St. Fulgentius involves even the unborn child in damnation. The Church, it is true, has come to no decision on this matter. One remark, however. It is not God, but the sinner who damns himself; and the offence being infinite, since God is infinite, the punishment must be infinite. Is that all, sir?”

“Explain the Trinity to me,” said Bouvard.

“With pleasure. Let us take a comparison: the three sides of a triangle, or rather our soul, which contains being, knowing, and willing; what we call faculty in the case of man is person in God. There is the mystery.”

“But the three sides of the triangle are not each the triangle; these three faculties of the soul do not make three souls, and your persons of the Trinity are three Gods.”

“Blasphemy!”

“So then there is only one person, one God, one substance affected in three ways!”

“Let us adore without understanding,” said the curé.

“Be it so,” said Bouvard. He was afraid of being taken for an atheist, and getting into bad odour at the château.

They now visited there three times a week, about five o’clock in winter, and the cup of tea warmed them. The count’s manners recalled the ease of the ancient court; the countess, placid and plump, exhibited much discernment about everything. Mademoiselle Yolande, their daughter, was the type of the young person, the angel of “keepsakes”; and Madame de Noares, their lady companion, resembled Pécuchet in having a pointed nose like him.

The first time they entered the drawing-room she was defending somebody.

“I assure you he is changed. His gift is a proof of it.”

This somebody was Gorju. He had made the betrothed couple an offer of a Gothic prie-dieu. It was brought. The arms of the two houses appeared on it in coloured relief. M. de Mahurot seemed satisfied with it, and Madame de Noares said to him:

“You will remember my protégés?”

Then she brought in two children, a boy of a dozen years and his sister, who was perhaps ten. Through the holes in their rags could be seen their limbs, reddened with cold. The one was shod in old slippers, the other wore only one wooden shoe. Their foreheads disappeared under their hair, and they stared around them with burning eyeballs like famished wolves.

Madame de Noares told how she had met them that morning on the high-road. Placquevent could not give any information about them.

They were asked their names.

“Victor – Victorine.”

“Where was their father?’

“In jail.”

“And what was he doing before that?”

“Nothing.”

“Their country?”

“St. Pierre.”

“But which St. Pierre?”

The two little ones for sole response, said, snivelling:

“Don’t know – don’t know.”

Their mother was dead, and they were begging.

Madame de Noares explained how dangerous it would be to abandon them; she moved the countess, piqued the count’s sense of honour, was backed up by mademoiselle, pressed the matter – succeeded.

The gamekeeper’s wife would take charge of them. Later, work would be found for them, and, as they did not know how to read or write, Madame de Noares gave them lessons herself, with a view to preparing them for catechism.

When M. Jeufroy used to come to the château, the two youngsters would be sent for; he would question them, and then deliver a lecture, into which he would import a certain amount of display on account of his audience.

On one occasion, when the abbé had discoursed about the patriarchs, Bouvard, on the way home with him and Pécuchet, disparaged them very much.

“Jacob is notorious for his thieveries, David for his murders, Solomon for his debaucheries.”

The abbé replied that we should look further into the matter. Abraham’s sacrifice is a prefigurement of the Passion; Jacob is another type of the Messiah, just like Joseph, like the Brazen Serpent, like Moses.

“Do you believe,” said Bouvard, “that he composed the ‘Pentateuch’?”

“Yes, no doubt.”

“And yet his death is recorded in it; the same observation applies to Joshua; and, as for the Judges, the author informs us that, at the period whose history he was writing, Israel had not yet kings. The work was, therefore, written under the Kings. The Prophets, too, astonish me.”

“He’s going to deny the Prophets now!”

“Not at all! but their overheated imagination saw Jehovah under different forms – that of a fire, of a bush, of an old man, of a dove; and they were not certain of revelation since they are always asking for a sign.”

“Ha! and where have you found out these nice things?”

“In Spinoza.”