They were waiting for M. Jeufroy to fix the date of the marriage, which was to take place at the
mayor’s office before being celebrated in the church, in order to show that they looked on civil marriage with contempt.
Foureau tried to defend it. The count and Hurel attacked it. What was a municipal function beside a priesthood? – and the baron would not have believed himself to be really wedded if he had been married only in the presence of a tri-coloured scarf.
“Bravo!” said M. Jeufroy, who had just come in. “Marriage having been established by Jesus Christ – ”
Pécuchet stopped him: “In which Gospel? In the Apostolic times they respected it so little that Tertullian compares it to adultery.”
“Oh! upon my word!”
“Yes, certainly! and it is not a sacrament. A sign is necessary for a sacrament. Show me the sign in marriage.”
In vain did the curé reply that it represented the union of God with the Church.
“You do not understand Christianity either! And the law – ”
“The law preserves the stamp of Christianity,” said M. de Faverges. “Without that, it would permit polygamy.”
A voice rejoined: “Where would be the harm?”
It was Bouvard, half hidden by a curtain.
“You might have many wives, like the Patriarchs, the Mormons, the Mussulmans, and nevertheless be an honest man.”
“Never!” exclaimed the priest; “honesty consists in rendering what is due. We owe homage to God. So he who is not a Christian is not honest.”
“Just as much as others,” said Bouvard.
The count, believing that he saw in this rejoinder an attack on religion, extolled it. It had set free the slaves.
Bouvard referred to authorities to prove the contrary:
“St. Paul recommends them to obey their masters as they would obey Jesus. St. Ambrose calls servitude a gift of God. Leviticus, Exodus, and the Councils have sanctioned it. Bossuet treats it as a part of the law of nations. And Monseigneur Bouvier approves of it.”
The count objected that, none the less, Christianity had developed civilisation.
“Ay, and idleness, by making a virtue of poverty.”
“However, sir, the morality of the Gospel?”
“Ha! ha! not so moral! Those who labour only during the last hour are paid as much as those who labour from the first hour. To him who hath is given, and from him who hath not is taken away. As for the precept of receiving blows without returning them and of letting yourself be robbed, it encourages the audacious, the cowardly, and the dissolute.”
They were doubly scandalised when Pécuchet declared that he liked Buddhism as well.
The priest burst out laughing.
“Ha! ha! ha! Buddhism!”
Madame de Noares lifted up her hands: “Buddhism!”
“What! Buddhism!” repeated the count.
“Do you understand it?” said Pécuchet to M. Jeufroy, who had become confused. “Well, then, learn something about it. Better than Christianity, and before it, it has recognised the nothingness of earthly things. Its practices are austere, its faithful more numerous than the entire body of Christians; and, as for incarnation, Vishnu had not merely one, but nine of them. So judge.”
“Travellers’ lies!” said Madame de Noares.
“Backed up by the Freemasons!” added the curé.
And all talking at the same time:
“Come, then, go on!”
“Very pretty!”
“For my part, I think it funny!”
“Not possible!”
Finally, Pécuchet, exasperated, declared that he would become a Buddhist!
“You are insulting Christian ladies,” said the baron.
Madame de Noares sank into an armchair. The countess and Yolande remained silent. The count kept rolling his eyes; Hurel was waiting for his orders. The abbé, to contain himself, read his breviary.
This sight calmed M. de Faverges; and, looking at the two worthies:
“Before you find fault with the Gospel, and that when there may be stains on your own lives, there is some reparation – ”
“Reparation?”
“For stains?”
“Enough! gentlemen. You don’t understand me.” Then, addressing Foureau: “Sorel is informed about it. Go to him.”
Bouvard and Pécuchet withdrew without bowing.
At the end of the avenue they all three gave vent to their indignation.
“They treated me as if I were a servant,” grumbled Foureau; and, as his companions agreed with him, in spite of their recollection of the affair of the hemorrhoids, he exhibited towards them a kind of sympathy.
Road-menders were working in the neighbourhood. The man who was over them drew near: it was Gorju. They began to chat.
He was overseeing the macadamisation of the road, voted in 1848, and he owed this post to M. de Mahurot, the engineer. “The one that’s going to marry Mademoiselle de Faverges. I suppose ’tis from the house below you were just coming?”
“For the last time,” said Pécuchet gruffly.
Gorju assumed an innocent air. “A quarrel! Come, come!”
And if they could have seen his countenance when they had turned on their heels, they might have observed that he had scented the cause of it.
A little further on, they stopped before a trellised enclosure, inside which there were kennels, and also a red-tiled cottage.
Victorine was on the threshold. They heard dogs barking. The gamekeeper’s wife came out. Knowing the object of the mayor’s visit, she called to Victor. Everything was ready beforehand, and their outfit was contained in two pocket-handkerchiefs fastened together with pins.
“A pleasant journey,” said the woman to the children, too glad to have no more to do with such vermin.
Was it their fault if they owed their birth to a convict father? On the contrary, they seemed very quiet, and did not even betray any alarm as to the place to which they were being conveyed.
Bouvard and Pécuchet watched them as they walked in front of them.
Victorine muttered some unintelligible words, with her little bundle over her arm, like a milliner carrying a bandbox.
Every now and then she would turn round, and Pécuchet, at the sight of her fair curls and her pretty figure, regretted that he had not such a child. Brought up under different conditions, she would be charming later. What happiness only to see her growing tall, to hear day after day her bird-like warbling, to kiss her when the fancy seized him! – and a feeling of tenderness, rising from his heart to his lips, made his eyes grow moist and somewhat oppressed his spirit.
Victor, like a soldier, had slung his baggage over his shoulder. He whistled, threw stones at the crows in the furrows, and went to cut switches off the trees.
Foureau called him back; and Bouvard, holding him by the hand, was delighted at feeling within his own those fingers of a robust and vigorous lad. The poor little wretch asked for nothing but to grow freely, like a flower in the open air! and he would rot between closed walls with tasks, punishment, a heap of tomfooleries! Bouvard was seized with pity, springing from a sense of revolt, a feeling of indignation against Fate, one of those fits of rage in which one longs to destroy government altogether.
“Jump about!”