to recognise
limits amongst the arts, and in each of the arts many forms; but
combinations arise in which the style of one will enter into another
without the ill result of deviating from the end--of not being true.

The too rigid application of truth is hurtful to beauty, and
preoccupation with beauty impedes truth. However, without an ideal there
is no truth; this is why types are of a more continuous reality than
portraits. Art, besides, only aims at verisimilitude; but verisimilitude
depends on the observer, and is a relative and transitory thing.

So they got lost in discussions. Bouvard believed less and less in
aesthetics.

"If it is not a humbug, its correctness will be demonstrated by
examples. Now listen."

And he read a note which had called for much research on his part:

"'Bouhours accuses Tacitus of not having the simplicity which history
demands. M. Droz, a professor, blames Shakespeare for his mixture of the
serious and the comic. Nisard, another professor, thinks that Andre
Chenier is, as a poet, beneath the seventeenth century. Blair, an
Englishman, finds fault with the picture of the harpies in Virgil.
Marmontel groans over the liberties taken by Homer. Lamotte does not
admit the immortality of his heroes. Vida is indignant at his similes.
In short, all the makers of rhetorics, poetics, and aesthetics, appear to
me idiots."

"You are exaggerating," said Pecuchet.

He was disturbed by doubts; for, if (as Longinus observes) ordinary
minds are incapable of faults, the faults must be associated with the
masters, and we are bound to admire them. This is going too far.
However, the masters are the masters. He would have liked to make the
doctrines harmonise with the works, the critics with the poets, to
grasp the essence of the Beautiful; and these questions exercised him so
much that his bile was stirred up. He got a jaundice from it.

It was at its crisis when Marianne, Madame Bordin's cook, came with a
request from her mistress for an interview with Bouvard.

The widow had not made her appearance since the dramatic performance.
Was this an advance? But why should she employ Marianne as an
intermediary? And all night Bouvard's imagination wandered.

Next day, about two o'clock, he was walking in the corridor, and
glancing out through the window from time to time. The door-bell rang.
It was the notary.

He crossed the threshold, ascended the staircase, and seated himself in
the armchair, and,