d hall larger than the other, and the drawing-room. The four rooms
on the first floor opened on the corridor facing the courtyard. Pecuchet
selected one of them for his collections. The last was to be the
library; and, on opening some of the presses, they found a few ancient
volumes, but they had no fancy for reading the titles of them. The most
urgent matter was the garden.

Bouvard, while passing close to the row of elm trees, discovered under
their branches a plaster figure of a woman. With two fingers she held
wide her petticoat, with her knees bent and her head over her shoulder,
as if she were afraid of being surprised.

"I beg your pardon! Don't inconvenience yourself!"--and this pleasantry
amused them so much that they kept repeating it twenty times a day for
three months.

Meanwhile, the people of Chavignolles were desirous to make their
acquaintance. Persons came to look at them through the railed fence.
They stopped up the openings with boards. This thwarted the inhabitants.
To protect himself from the sun Bouvard wore on his head a handkerchief,
fastened so as to look like a turban. Pecuchet wore his cap, and he had
a big apron with a pocket in front, in which a pair of pruning-shears,
his silk handkerchief, and his snuff-box jostled against one another.
Bare-armed, side by side, they dug, weeded, and pruned, imposing tasks
on each other, and eating their meals as quickly as ever they could,
taking care, however, to drink their coffee on the hillock, in order to
enjoy the view.

If they happened to come across a snail, they pounced on it and crushed
it, making grimaces with the corners of their mouths, as if they were
cracking nuts. They never went out without their grafting implements,
and they used to cut the worms in two with such force that the iron of
the implement would sink three inches deep. To get rid of caterpillars,
they struck the trees furiously with switches.

Bouvard planted a peony in the middle of the grass plot, and tomatoes so
that they would hang down like chandeliers under the arch of the arbour.

Pecuchet had a large pit dug in front of the kitchen, and divided it
into three parts, where he could manufacture composts which would grow
a heap of things, whose detritus would again bring other crops,
providing in this way other manures to a limitless extent; and he fell
into reveries on the edge of the pit, seeing in the future mountains of
fruits, floods of flowers, and avalanches of