ing alone, the idea of a cataclysm
disturbed him. He had eaten nothing since morning; his temples were
throbbing. All at once the soil appeared to him to be shaking, and the
cliff over his head to be bending forward at its summit. At that moment
a shower of gravel rolled down from the top of it. Pecuchet observed him
scampering off wildly, understood his fright, and cried from a distance:

"Stop! stop! The period is not completed!"

And in order to overtake him he made enormous bounds with the aid of his
tourist's stick, all the while shouting out:

"The period is not completed! The period is not completed!"

Bouvard, in a mad state, kept running without stopping. The
many-branched umbrella fell down, the skirts of his coat were flying,
the knapsack was tossing on his back. He was like a tortoise with wings
about to gallop amongst the rocks. One bigger than the rest concealed
him from view.

Pecuchet reached the spot out of breath, saw nobody, then returned in
order to gain the fields through a defile, which Bouvard, no doubt, had
taken.

This narrow ascent was cut by four great steps in the cliff, as lofty as
the heights of two men, and glittering like polished alabaster.

At an elevation of fifty feet Pecuchet wished to descend; but as the sea
was dashing against him in front, he set about clambering up further. At
the second turning, when he beheld the empty space, terror froze him. As
he approached the third, his legs were becoming weak. Volumes of air
vibrated around him, a cramp gripped his epigastrium; he sat down on the
ground, with eyes closed, no longer having consciousness of aught save
the beatings of his own heart, which were suffocating him; then he flung
his tourist's stick on the ground, and on his hands and knees resumed
his ascent. But the three hammers attached to his belt began to press
against his stomach; the stones with which he had crammed his pockets
knocked against his sides; the peak of his cap blinded him; the wind
increased in violence. At length he reached the upper ground, and there
found Bouvard, who had ascended higher through a less difficult defile.
A cart picked them up. They forgot all about Etretat.

The next evening, at Havre, while waiting for the packet-boat, they saw
at the tail-end of a newspaper, a short scientific essay headed, "On
the Teaching of Geology." This article, full of facts, explained the
subject as it was understood at the period.

"There has never