ing wasted an opportunity. Bah! he should
have one again--and then not all women are alike. With some of them you
must be blunt, while audacity destroys you with others. In short, he was
satisfied with himself--and he did not confide his hope to Pecuchet;
this was through fear of the remarks that would be passed, and not at
all through delicacy.

From that time forth they used to recite in the presence of Melie and
Gorju, all the time regretting that they had not a private theatre.

The little servant-girl was amused without understanding a bit of it,
wondering at the language, charmed at the roll of the verses. Gorju
applauded the philosophic passages in the tragedies, and everything in
the people's favour in the melodramas, so that, delighted at his good
taste, they thought of giving him lessons, with a view to making an
actor of him subsequently. This prospect dazzled the workman.

Their performances by this time became the subject of general gossip.
Vaucorbeil spoke to them about the matter in a sly fashion. Most people
regarded their acting with contempt.

They only prided themselves the more upon it. They crowned themselves
artists. Pecuchet wore moustaches, and Bouvard thought he could not do
anything better, with his round face and his bald patch, than to give
himself a head _a la_ Beranger. Finally, they determined to write a
play.

The subject was the difficulty. They searched for it while they were at
breakfast, and drank coffee, a stimulant indispensable for the brain,
then two or three little glasses. They would next take a nap on their
beds, after which they would make their way down to the fruit garden and
take a turn there; and at length they would leave the house to find
inspiration outside, and, after walking side by side, they would come
back quite worn out.

Or else they would shut themselves up together. Bouvard would sweep the
table, lay down paper in front of him, dip his pen, and remain with his
eyes on the ceiling; whilst Pecuchet, in the armchair, would be plunged
in meditation, with his legs stretched out and his head down.

Sometimes they felt a shivering sensation, and, as it were, the passing
breath of an idea, but at the very moment when they were seizing it, it
had vanished.

But methods exist for discovering subjects. You take a title at random,
and a fact trickles out of it. You develop a proverb; you combine a
number of adventures so as to form only one. None of these devices