ch they drank. Pecuchet caught one of them in the act, and exclaimed,
while pushing him out by the shoulders:

"Wretch! You are a disgrace to the village that gave you birth!"

His presence inspired no respect. Moreover, he was plagued with the
garden. All his time would not have sufficed to keep it in order.
Bouvard was occupied with the farm. They took counsel and decided on
this arrangement.

The first point was to have good hotbeds. Pecuchet got one made of
brick. He painted the frames himself; and, being afraid of too much
sunlight, he smeared over all the bell-glasses with chalk. He took care
to cut off the tops of the leaves for slips. Next he devoted attention
to the layers. He attempted many sorts of grafting--flute-graft,
crown-graft, shield-graft, herbaceous grafting, and whip-grafting. With
what care he adjusted the two libers! how he tightened the ligatures!
and what a heap of ointment it took to cover them again!

Twice a day he took his watering-pot and swung it over the plants as if
he would have shed incense over them. In proportion as they became green
under the water, which fell in a thin shower, it seemed to him as if he
were quenching his own thirst and reviving along with them. Then,
yielding to a feeling of intoxication, he snatched off the rose of the
watering-pot, and poured out the liquid copiously from the open neck.

At the end of the elm hedge, near the female figure in plaster, stood a
kind of log hut. Pecuchet locked up his implements there, and spent
delightful hours there picking the berries, writing labels, and putting
his little pots in order. He sat down to rest himself on a box at the
door of the hut, and then planned fresh improvements.

He had put two clumps of geraniums at the end of the front steps.
Between the cypresses and the distaff-shaped trees he had planted
sunflowers; and as the plots were covered with buttercups, and all the
walks with fresh sand, the garden was quite dazzling in its abundance of
yellow hues.

But the bed swarmed with larvae. In spite of the dead leaves placed there
to heat the plants, under the painted frames and the whitened
bell-glasses, only a stunted crop made its appearance. He failed with
the broccoli, the mad-apples, the turnips, and the watercress, which he
had tried to raise in a tub. After the thaw all the artichokes were
ruined. The cabbages gave him some consolation. One of them especially
excited his hopes. It expanded and shut up qu