ed into organic chemistry.

What a marvel to find again in living beings the same substances of
which the minerals are composed! Nevertheless they experienced a sort of
humiliation at the idea that their own personality contained phosphorus,
like matches; albumen, like the whites of eggs; and hydrogen gas, like
street-lamps.

After colours and oily substances came the turn of fermentation. This
brought them to acids--and the law of equivalents once more confused
them. They tried to elucidate it by means of the atomic theory, which
fairly swamped them.

In Bouvard's opinion instruments would have been necessary to understand
all this. The expense was very great, and they had incurred too much
already. But, no doubt, Dr. Vaucorbeil could enlighten them.

They presented themselves during his consultation hours.

"I hear you, gentlemen. What is your ailment?"

Pecuchet replied that they were not patients, and, having stated the
object of their visit:

"We want to understand, in the first place, the higher atomicity."

The physician got very red, then blamed them for being desirous to learn
chemistry.

"I am not denying its importance, you may be sure; but really they are
shoving it in everywhere! It exercises a deplorable influence on
medicine."

And the authority of his language was strengthened by the appearance of
his surroundings. Over the chimney-piece trailed some diachylum and
strips for binding. In the middle of the desk stood the surgical case. A
basin in a corner was full of probes, and close to the wall there was a
representation of a human figure deprived of the skin.

Pecuchet complimented the doctor on it.

"It must be a lovely study, anatomy."

M. Vaucorbeil expatiated on the fascination he had formerly found in
dissections; and Bouvard inquired what were the analogies between the
interior of a woman and that of a man.

In order to satisfy him, the doctor fetched from his library a
collection of anatomical plates.

"Take them with you! You can look at them more at your ease in your own
house."

The skeleton astonished them by the prominence of the jawbone, the holes
for the eyes, and the frightful length of the hands.

They stood in need of an explanatory work. They returned to M.
Vaucorbeil's residence, and, thanks to the manual of Alexander Lauth,
they learned the divisions of the frame, wondering at the backbone,
sixteen times stronger, it is said, than if the Creator had made it
str