“So, then, religion must change. Paradise is something infantile, with its blessed always in a state of contemplation, always chanting hymns, and looking from on high at the tortures of the damned. When one reflects that Christianity had for its basis an apple!”
The curé was annoyed. “Deny revelation; that would be simpler.”
“How do you make out that God spoke?” said Bouvard.
“Prove that he did not speak!” said M. Jeufroy.
“Once again, who affirms it?”
“The Church.”
“Nice testimony!”
This discussion bored M. de Mahurot, and, as he walked along: “Pray listen to the curé. He knows more than you.”
Bouvard and Pécuchet made signs to indicate that they were taking another road; then, at Croix-Verte:
“A very good evening.”
“Your servant,” said the baron.
All this would be told to M. de Faverges, and perhaps a rupture would result. So much the worse. They felt that they were despised by those people of rank. They were never asked to dinner, and they were tired of Madame de Noares, with her continual remonstrances.
They could not, however, keep the De Maistre; and a fortnight after they returned to the château, not expecting to be welcomed, but they were. All the family were in the boudoir, and amongst those present were Hurel and, strangely enough, Foureau.
Correction had failed to correct Victor. He refused to learn his catechism; and Victorine gave utterance to vulgar words. In short, the boy should go to a reformatory, and the girl to a nunnery. Foureau was charged with carrying out the measure, and he was about to go when the countess called him back.
They were waiting for M. Jeufroy to fix the date of the marriage, which was to take place at the
mayor’s office before being celebrated in the church, in order to show that they looked on civil marriage with contempt.
Foureau tried to defend it. The count and Hurel attacked it. What was a municipal function beside a priesthood? – and the baron would not have believed himself to be really wedded if he had been married only in the presence of a tri-coloured scarf.
“Bravo!” said M. Jeufroy, who had just come in. “Marriage having been established by Jesus Christ – ”
Pécuchet stopped him: “In which Gospel? In the Apostolic times they respected it so little that Tertullian compares it to adultery.”
“Oh! upon my word!”
“Yes, certainly! and it is not a sacrament. A sign is necessary for a sacrament. Show me the sign in marriage.”
In vain did the curé reply that it represented the union of God with the Church.
“You do not understand Christianity either! And the law – ”
“The law preserves the stamp of Christianity,” said M. de Faverges. “Without that, it would permit polygamy.”
A voice rejoined: “Where would be the harm?”
It was Bouvard, half hidden by a curtain.
“You might have many wives, like the Patriarchs, the Mormons, the Mussulmans, and nevertheless be an honest man.”
“Never!” exclaimed the priest; “honesty consists in rendering what is due. We owe homage to God. So he who is not a Christian is not honest.”
“Just as much as others,” said Bouvard.
The count, believing that he saw in this rejoinder an attack on religion, extolled it. It had set free the slaves.
Bouvard referred to authorities to prove the contrary:
“St. Paul recommends them to obey their masters as they would obey Jesus. St. Ambrose calls servitude a gift of God. Leviticus, Exodus, and the Councils have sanctioned it. Bossuet treats it as a part of the law of nations. And Monseigneur Bouvier approves of it.”
The count objected that, none the less, Christianity had developed civilisation.
“Ay, and idleness, by making a virtue of poverty.”
“However, sir, the morality of the Gospel?”
“Ha! ha! not so moral! Those who labour only during the last hour are paid as much as those who labour from the first hour. To him who hath is given, and from him who hath not is taken away. As for the precept of receiving blows without returning them and of letting yourself be robbed, it encourages the audacious, the cowardly, and the dissolute.”
They were doubly scandalised when Pécuchet declared that he liked Buddhism as well.
The priest burst out laughing.
“Ha! ha! ha! Buddhism!”
Madame de Noares lifted up her hands: “Buddhism!”
“What! Buddhism!” repeated the count.
“Do you understand it?” said Pécuchet to M. Jeufroy, who had become confused. “Well, then, learn something about it. Better than Christianity, and before it, it has recognised the nothingness of earthly things. Its practices are austere, its faithful more numerous than the entire body of Christians; and, as for incarnation, Vishnu had not merely one, but nine of them. So judge.”
“Travellers’ lies!” said Madame de Noares.
“Backed up by the Freemasons!” added the curé.
And all talking at the same time:
“Come, then, go on!”
“Very pretty!”
“For my part, I think it funny!”
“Not possible!”
Finally, Pécuchet, exasperated, declared that he would become a Buddhist!
“You are insulting Christian ladies,” said the baron.
Madame de Noares sank into an armchair. The countess and Yolande remained silent. The count kept rolling his eyes; Hurel was waiting for his orders. The abbé, to contain himself, read his breviary.
This sight calmed M. de Faverges; and, looking at the two worthies:
“Before you find fault with the Gospel, and that when there may be stains on your own lives, there is some reparation – ”
“Reparation?”
“For stains?”
“Enough! gentlemen. You don’t understand me.” Then, addressing Foureau: “Sorel is informed about it. Go to him.”
Bouvard and Pécuchet withdrew without bowing.
At the end of the avenue they all three gave vent to their indignation.
“They treated me as if I were a servant,” grumbled Foureau; and, as his companions agreed with him, in spite of their recollection of the affair of the hemorrhoids, he exhibited towards them a kind of sympathy.
Road-menders were working in the neighbourhood. The man who was over them drew near: it was Gorju. They began to chat.
He was overseeing the macadamisation of the road, voted in 1848, and he owed this post to M. de Mahurot, the engineer. “The one that’s going to marry Mademoiselle de Faverges. I suppose ’tis from the house below you were just coming?”
“For the last time,” said Pécuchet gruffly.
Gorju assumed an innocent air. “A quarrel! Come, come!”
And if they could have seen his countenance when they had turned on their heels, they might have observed that he had scented the cause of it.
A little further on, they stopped before a trellised enclosure, inside which there were kennels, and also a red-tiled cottage.
Victorine was on the threshold. They heard dogs barking. The gamekeeper’s wife came out. Knowing the object of the mayor’s visit, she called to Victor. Everything was ready beforehand, and their outfit was contained in two pocket-handkerchiefs fastened together with pins.
“A pleasant journey,” said the woman to the children, too glad to have no more to do with such vermin.
Was it their fault if they owed their birth to a convict father? On the contrary, they seemed very quiet, and did not even betray any alarm as to the place to which they were being conveyed.
Bouvard and Pécuchet watched them as they walked in front of them.
Victorine muttered some unintelligible words, with her little bundle over her arm, like a milliner carrying a bandbox.
Every now and then she would turn round, and Pécuchet, at the sight of her fair curls and her pretty figure, regretted that he had not such a child. Brought up under different conditions, she would be charming later. What happiness only to see her growing tall, to hear day after day her bird-like warbling, to kiss her when the fancy seized him! – and a feeling of tenderness, rising from his heart to his lips, made his eyes grow moist and somewhat oppressed his spirit.
Victor, like a soldier, had slung his baggage over his shoulder. He whistled, threw stones at the crows in the furrows, and went to cut switches off the trees.
Foureau called him back; and Bouvard, holding him by the hand, was delighted at feeling within his own those fingers of a robust and vigorous lad. The poor little wretch asked for nothing but to grow freely, like a flower in the open air! and he would rot between closed walls with tasks, punishment, a heap of tomfooleries! Bouvard was seized with pity, springing from a sense of revolt, a feeling of indignation against Fate, one of those fits of rage in which one longs to destroy government altogether.
“Jump about!” he said, “amuse yourself! Have a bit of fun as long as you can!”
The youngster scampered off.
His sister and he were to sleep at the inn, and at daybreak the messenger from Falaise would take Victor and set him down at the reformatory of Beaubourg; while a nun belonging to the orphanage of Grand-Camp would come to fetch Victorine.
Foureau having gone into these details, was once more lost in his own thoughts. But Bouvard wished to know how much the maintenance of the youngsters would cost.
“Bah! a matter perhaps of three hundred francs. The count has given me twenty-five for the first disbursements. What a stingy fellow!”
And, stung to the heart by the contempt shown towards his scarf, Foureau quickened his pace in silence.
Bouvard murmured: “They make me feel sad. I will take the charge of them.”
“And so will I,” said Pécuchet, the same idea having occurred to both of them.
No doubt there were impediments?
“None,” returned Foureau. Besides, he had the right as mayor to entrust deserted children to whomsoever he thought fit. And, after a prolonged hesitation:
“Well, yes; take them! That will annoy him.”
Bouvard and Pécuchet carried them off.
When they returned to their abode they found at the end of the staircase, under the Madonna, Marcel upon his knees praying with fervour. With his head thrown back, his eyes half closed, and his hare-lip gaping, he had the appearance of a fakir in ecstasy.
“What a brute!” said Bouvard.
“Why? He is perhaps attending to things that would make you envy him if you could only see them. Are there not two worlds entirely distinct? The aim of a process of reasoning is of less consequence than the manner of reasoning. What does the form of belief matter? The great thing is to believe.”
Such were the objections of Pécuchet to Bouvard’s observation.
CHAPTER X
Lessons in Art and Science
THEY procured a number of works relating to education, and resolved to adopt a system of their own. It was necessary to banish every metaphysical idea, and, in accordance with the experimental method, to follow in the lines of natural development. There was no haste, for the two pupils might forget what they had learned.
Though they had strong constitutions, Pécuchet wished, like a Spartan, to make them more hardy, to accustom them to hunger, thirst, and severe weather, and even insisted on having their feet badly shod in order that they might be prepared for colds. Bouvard was opposed to this.
The dark closet at the end of the corridor was used as their sleeping apartment. Its furniture consisted of two folding beds, two couches, and a jug. Above their heads the top window was open, and spiders crawled along the plaster. Often the children recalled to mind the interior of a cabin where they used to wrangle. One night their father came home with blood on his hands. Some time afterwards the gendarmes arrived. After that they lived in a wood. Men who made wooden shoes used to kiss their mother. She died, and was carried off in a cart. They used to get severe beatings; they got lost. Then they could see once more Madame de Noares and Sorel; and, without asking themselves the reason why they were in this house, they felt happy there. But they were disagreeably surprised when at the end of eight months the lessons began again. Bouvard took charge of the little girl, and Pécuchet of the boy.
Victor was able to distinguish letters, but did not succeed in forming syllables. He stammered over them, then stopped suddenly, and looked like an idiot. Victorine put questions. How was it that “ch” in “orchestra” had the sound of a “q,” and that of a “k” in “archæology.” We must sometimes join two vowels and at other times separate them. All this did not seem to her right. She grew indignant at it.
The teachers gave instruction at the same hour in their respective apartments, and, as the partition was thin, these four voices, one soft, one deep, and two sharp, made a hideous concert. To finish the business and to stimulate the youngsters by means of emulation, they conceived the idea of making them work together in the museum; and they proceeded to teach them writing. The two pupils, one at each end of the table, copied written words that were set for them; but the position of their bodies was awkward. It was necessary to straighten them; their copybooks fell down; their pens broke, and their ink bottles were turned upside down.
Victorine, on certain days, went on capitally for about three minutes, then she would begin to scrawl, and, seized with discouragement, she would sit with her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Victor was not long before he fell asleep, lying over his desk.
Perhaps they were distressed by it? Too great a strain was bad for young heads.
“Let us stop,” said Bouvard.
There is nothing so stupid as to make children learn by heart; yet, if the memory is not exercised, it will go to waste, and so they taught the youngsters to recite like parrots the first fables of La Fontaine. The children expressed their approval of the ant that heaped up treasure, of the wolf that devoured the lamb, and of the lion that took everyone’s share.
When they had become more audacious, they spoiled the garden. But what amusement could be provided for them?
Jean Jacques Rousseau in Emile advises the teacher to get the pupil to make his own playthings. Bouvard could not contrive to make a hoop or Pécuchet to sew up a ball. They passed on to toys that were instructive, such as cut-paper work. Pécuchet showed them his microscope. When the candle was lighted, Bouvard would sketch with the shadow of his finger on the wall the profile of a hare or a pig. But the pupils grew tired of it.
Writers have gone into raptures about the delightfulness of an open-air luncheon or a boating excursion. Was it possible for them really to have such recreations? Fénelon recommends from time to time “an innocent conversation.” They could not invent one. So they had to come back to the lessons – the multiplying bowls, the erasures of their scrawlings, and the process of teaching them how to read by copying printed characters. All had proved failures, when suddenly a bright idea struck them.
As Victor was prone to gluttony, they showed him the name of a dish: he soon ran through Le Cuisinier Français with ease. Victorine, being a coquette, was promised a new dress if she wrote to the dressmaker for it: in less than three weeks she accomplished this feat. This was playing on their vices – a pernicious method, no doubt; but it had succeeded.
Now that they had learned to read and write, what should they be taught? Another puzzle.
Girls have no need of learning, as in the case of boys. All the same, they are usually brought up like mere animals, their sole intellectual baggage being confined to mystical follies.
Is it expedient to teach them languages? “Spanish and Italian,” the Swan of Cambray lays down, “scarcely serve any purpose save to enable people to read dangerous books.”
Such a motive appeared silly to them. However, Victorine would have to do only with these languages; whereas English is more widely used. Pécuchet proceeded to study the rules of the language. He seriously demonstrated the mode of expressing the “th” – “like this, now, the, the, the.”
But before instructing a child we must be acquainted with its aptitudes. They may be divined by phrenology. They plunged into it, then sought to verify its assertions by experiments on their own persons. Bouvard exhibited the bumps of benevolence, imagination, veneration, and amorous energy —vulgo, eroticism. On Pécuchet’s temples were found philosophy and enthusiasm allied with a crafty disposition. Such, in fact, were their characters. What surprised them more was to recognise in the one as well as in the other a propensity towards friendship, and, charmed with the discovery, they embraced each other with emotion.
They next made an examination of Marcel. His greatest fault, of which they were not ignorant, was an excessive appetite. Nevertheless Bouvard and Pécuchet were dismayed to find above the top of the ear, on a level with the eye, the organ of alimentivity. With advancing years their servant would perhaps become like the woman in the Salpêtrière, who every day ate eight pounds of bread, swallowed at one time fourteen different soups, and at another sixty bowls of coffee. They might not have enough to keep him.
The heads of their pupils presented no curious characteristics. No doubt they had gone the wrong way to work with them. A very simple expedient enabled them to develop their experience.
On market days they insinuated themselves among groups of country people on the green, amid the sacks of oats, the baskets of cheese, the calves and the horses, indifferent to the jostlings; and whenever they found a young fellow with his father, they asked leave to feel his skull for a scientific purpose. The majority vouchsafed no reply; others, fancying it was pomatum for ringworm of the scalp, refused testily. A few, through indifference, allowed themselves to be led towards the porch of the church, where they would be undisturbed.
One morning, just as Bouvard and Pécuchet were beginning operations, the curé suddenly presented himself, and seeing what they were about, denounced phrenology as leading to materialism and to fatalism. The thief, the assassin, the adulterer, have henceforth only to cast the blame of their crimes on their bumps.
Bouvard retorted that the organ predisposes towards the act without forcing one to do it. From the fact that a man has in him the germ of a vice, there is nothing to show that he will be vicious.
“However, I wonder at the orthodox, for, while upholding innate ideas, they reject propensities. What a contradiction!”
But phrenology, according to M. Jeufroy, denied Divine Omnipotence, and it was unseemly to practise under the shadow of the holy place, in the very face of the altar.
“Take yourselves off! No! – take yourselves off!”
They established themselves in the shop of Ganot, the hairdresser. Bouvard and Pécuchet went so far as to treat their subjects’ relations to a shave or a clip. One afternoon the doctor came to get his hair cut. While seating himself in the armchair he saw in the glass the reflection of the two phrenologists passing their fingers over a child’s pate.
“So you are at these fooleries?” he said.
“Why foolery?”
Vaucorbeil smiled contemptuously, then declared that there were not several organs in the brain. Thus one man can digest food which another cannot digest. Are we to assume that there are as many stomachs in the stomach as there are varieties of taste?
They pointed out that one kind of work is a relaxation after another; an intellectual effort does not strain all the faculties at the same time; each has its distinct seat.
“The anatomists have not discovered it,” said Vaucorbeil.
“That’s because they have dissected badly,” replied Pécuchet.
“What?”
“Oh, yes! they cut off slices without regard to the connection of the parts” – a phrase out of a book which recurred to his mind.
“What a piece of nonsense!” exclaimed the physician. “The cranium is not moulded over the brain, the exterior over the interior. Gall is mistaken, and I defy you to justify his doctrine by taking at random three persons in the shop.”
The first was a country woman, with big blue eyes.
Pécuchet, looking at her, said:
“She has a good memory.”
Her husband attested the fact, and offered himself for examination.
“Oh! you, my worthy fellow, it is hard to lead you.”
According to the others, there was not in the world such a headstrong fellow.
The third experiment was made on a boy who was accompanied by his grandmother.
Pécuchet observed that he must be fond of music.
“I assure you it is so,” said the good woman. “Show these gentlemen, that they may see for themselves.”
He drew a Jew’s-harp from under his blouse and began blowing into it.
There was a crashing sound – it was the violent slamming of the door by the doctor as he went out.
They were no longer in doubt about themselves, and summoning their two pupils, they resumed the analysis of their skull-bones.
That of Victorine was even all around, a sign of ponderation; but her brother had an unfortunate cranium – a very large protuberance in the mastoid angle of the parietal bones indicated the organ of destructiveness, of murder; and a swelling farther down was the sign of covetousness, of theft. Bouvard and Pécuchet remained dejected for eight days.
But it was necessary to comprehend the exact sense of words: what we call combativeness implies contempt for death. If it causes homicides, it may, likewise bring about the saving of lives. Acquisitiveness includes the tact of pickpockets and the ardour of merchants. Irreverence has its parallel in the spirit of criticism, craft in circumspection. An instinct always resolves itself into two parts, a bad one and a good one. The one may be destroyed by cultivating the other, and by this system a daring child, far from being a vagabond, may become a general. The sluggish man will have only prudence; the penurious, economy; the extravagant, generosity.
A magnificent dream filled their minds. If they carried to a successful end the education of their pupils, they would later found an establishment having for its object to correct the intellect, to subdue tempers, and to ennoble the heart. Already they talked about subscriptions and about the building.
Their triumph in Ganot’s shop had made them famous, and people came to consult them in order that they might tell them their chances of good luck.
All sorts of skulls were examined for this purpose – bowl-shaped, pear-shaped, those rising like sugar loaves, square heads, high heads, contracted skulls and flat skulls, with bulls’ jaws, birds’ faces, and eyes like pigs’; but such a crowd of people disturbed the hairdresser in his work. Their elbows rubbed against the glass cupboard that contained the perfumery, they put the combs out of order, the wash-hand stand was broken; so he turned out all the idlers, begging of Bouvard and Pécuchet to follow them, an ultimatum which they unmurmuringly accepted, being a little worn out with cranioscopy.
Next day, as they were passing before the little garden of the captain, they saw, chatting with him, Girbal, Coulon, the keeper, and his younger son, Zephyrin, dressed as an altar-boy. His robe was quite new, and he was walking below before returning to the sacristy, and they were complimenting him.
Curious to know what they thought of him, Placquevent asked “these gentlemen” to feel his young man’s head.
The skin of his forehead looked tightly drawn; his nose, thin and very gristly at the tip, drooped slantwise over his pinched lips; his chin was pointed, his expression evasive, and his right shoulder was too high.
“Take off your cap,” said his father to him.
Bouvard slipped his hands through his straw-coloured hair; then it was Pécuchet’s turn, and they communicated to each other their observations in low tones:
“Evident love of books! Ha! ha! approbativeness! Conscientiousness wanting! No amativeness!”
“Well?” said the keeper.
Pécuchet opened his snuff-box, and took a pinch.
“Faith!” replied Bouvard, “this is scarcely a genius.”
Placquevent reddened with humiliation.
“All the same, he will do my bidding.”
“Oho! Oho!”
“But I am his father, by God! and I have certainly the right – ”
“Within certain limits,” observed Pécuchet.
Girbal interposed. “The paternal authority is indispensable.”
“But if the father is an idiot?”
“No matter,” said the captain; “his power is none the less absolute.”
“In the interests of the children,” added Coulon.
According to Bouvard and Pécuchet, they owed nothing to the authors of their being; and the parents, on the other hand, owed them food, education, forethought – in fact, everything.
Their good neighbours protested against this opinion as immoral. Placquevent was hurt by it as if it were an insult.
“For all that, they are a nice lot that you collect on the high-roads. They will go far. Take care!”
“Care of what?” said Pécuchet sourly.
“Oh! I am not afraid of you.”
“Nor I of you either.”
Coulon here used his influence to restrain the keeper and induce him to go away quietly.
For some minutes there was silence. Then there was some talk about the dahlias of the captain, who would not let his friends depart till he had exhibited every one of them.
Bouvard and Pécuchet were returning homeward when, a hundred paces in front of them, they noticed Placquevent; and close beside him Zephyrin was lifting up his elbow, like a shield, to save his ear from being boxed.
What they had just heard expressed, in another form, were the opinions of the count; but the example of their pupils proved how much liberty had the advantage over coercion. However, a little discipline was desirable.
Pécuchet nailed up a blackboard in the museum for the purpose of demonstrations. They each resolved to keep a journal wherein the things done by the pupil, noted down every evening, could be read next morning, and, to regulate the work by ringing the bell when it should be finished. Like Dupont de Nemours, they would, at first, make use of the paternal injunction, then of the military injunction, and familiarity in addressing them would be forbidden.
Bouvard tried to teach Victorine ciphering. Sometimes he would make mistakes, and both of them would laugh. Then she would kiss him on the part of his neck which was smoothest and ask leave to go, and he would give his permission.
Pécuchet at the hour for lessons in vain rang the bell and shouted out the military injunction through the window. The brat did not come. His socks were always hanging over his ankles; even at table he thrust his fingers into his nostrils, and did not even keep in his wind. Broussais objects to reprimands on this point on the ground that “it is necessary to obey the promptings of a conservative instinct.”
Victorine and he made use of frightful language, saying, mé itou instead of moi aussi, bère instead of boire, al instead of elle, and deventiau with the iau; but, as grammar cannot be understood by children, and as they would learn the use of language by hearing others speak correctly, the two worthy men watched their own words till they found it quite distressing.
They held different views about the way to teach geography. Bouvard thought it more logical to begin with the commune, Pécuchet with the entire world.
With a watering-pot and some sand he sought to demonstrate what was meant by a river, an island, a gulf, and even sacrificed three flower-beds to explain three continents; but the cardinal points could not be got into Victor’s head.
On a night in January Pécuchet carried him off in the open country. While they walked along he held forth on astronomy: mariners find it useful on their voyages; without it Christopher Columbus would not have made his discovery. We owe a debt of gratitude to Copernicus, to Galileo, and to Newton.
It was freezing hard, and in the dark blue sky countless stars were scintillating. Pécuchet raised his eyes.
“What! No Ursa Major!”
The last time he had seen it, it was turned to the other side. At length he recognised it, then pointed out the polar star, which is always turned towards the north, and by means of which travellers can find out their exact situation.
Next day he placed an armchair in the middle of the room and began to waltz round it.
“Imagine that this armchair is the sun and that I am the earth; it moves like this.”
Victor stared at him, filled with astonishment.
After this he took an orange, passed through it a piece of stick to indicate the poles, then drew a circle across it with charcoal to mark the equator. He next moved the orange round a wax candle, drawing attention to the fact that the various points on the surface were not illuminated at the same time – which causes the difference of climates; and for that of the seasons he sloped the orange, inasmuch as the earth does not stand up straight – which brings about the equinoxes and the solstices.
Victor did not understand a bit of it. He believed that the earth turns around in a long needle, and that the equator is a ring pressing its circumference.
By means of an atlas Pécuchet exhibited Europe to him; but, dazzled by so many lines and colours, he could no longer distinguish the names of different places. The bays and the mountains did not harmonise with the respective nations; the political order confused the physical order. All this, perhaps, might be cleared up by studying history.
It would have been more practical to begin with the village, and go on next to the arrondissement, the department, and the province; but, as Chavignolles had no annals, it was absolutely necessary to stick to universal history. It was rendered embarrassing by such a variety of details that one ought only to select its beautiful features. For Greek history there are: “We shall fight in the shade,” the banishment of Aristides by the envious, and the confidence of Alexander in his physician. For Roman, the geese of the Capitol, the tripod of Scævola, the barrel of Regulus. The bed of roses of Guatimozin is noteworthy for America. As for France, it supplies the vase of Soissons, the oak of St. Louis, the death of Joan of Arc, the boiled hen of Bearnais – you have only too extensive a field to select from, not to speak of À moi d’Auvergne! and the shipwreck of the Vengeur.
Victor confused the men, the centuries, and the countries. Pécuchet, however, was not going to plunge him into subtle considerations, and the mass of facts is a veritable labyrinth. He confined himself to the names of the kings of France. Victor forgot them through not knowing the dates. But, if Dumouchel’s system of mnemonics had been insufficient for themselves, what would it be for him! Conclusion: history can be learned only by reading a great deal. He would do this.