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Two men appeared.

One was coming from the Bastille, the other from Jardin des Plantes. The taller one, wearing a linen suit, walked with his hat pushed back, vest unbuttoned and tie in his hand. The shorter one, whose body disappeared inside a brown frock coat, lowered his head beneath a cap with a pointed visor.

When they reached the middle of the boulevard, they both sat down, at the same moment, on the same bench.

To wipe their foreheads, they removed their hats, which each man placed next to him. The short man noticed the name Bouvard written in his neighbor’s, while the latter made out the word Pécuchet in the cap belonging to the fellow in the coat.

“Fancy that!” he said. “We both had the idea of writing our names in our hats.”

“I should say so! Someone could walk off with mine at the office!”

“You don’t say—I work in an office, too.”

At which point they looked at each other. Pécuchet was immediately charmed by Bouvard’s friendly appearance. His bluish, heavy-lidded eyes smiled in his florid face. His trousers, which puckered at the cuff over buckskin shoes, had a wide flap in the front that molded his stomach and caused his shirt to puff out at the belt line; and his blond hair, waving into soft curls, made him look like an overgrown child. His lips gave off kind of a low, continual whistle.

Bouvard was struck by Pécuchet’s serious demeanor. He seemed to be wearing a wig, so flat and black was the hair covering his high skull. His long nose made his face seem in constant profile. His legs, encased in twill stovepipes, were disproportionate to the length of his torso, and he had a strong, cavernous voice.

He let out a sigh: “It would be so much nicer in the country!”

But according to Bouvard, the suburbs were impossible because of all the noise from the dance halls. Pécuchet felt the same way. Still, he was getting tired of the capital; Bouvard too.

And their eyes wandered over the heaps of paving stones, the hideous water in which a bundle of straw was floating, the smokestack of a factory rising up from the horizon. The sewers gave off a fetid stench. When they turned around, they saw only the walls of the municipal granary.

All things considered (and Pécuchet found this surprising), it was hotter in the streets than at home. Bouvard encouraged him to remove his coat. Personally, he couldn’t care less what people thought!

Suddenly, a drunk zigzagged across the sidewalk; and, from the topic of laborers, they launched into a discussion of politics. They were of the same opinion, though Bouvard was perhaps a bit more liberal.

A clanking noise ran out on the cobblestones in a cloud of dust: it was three hackney cabs heading toward Bercy, carrying a bride with her bouquet, some bourgeois in white tie, ladies sunk to the armpits in their skirts, two or three little girls, and a student. The sight of this wedding led Bouvard and Pécuchet to talk of women, whom they declared to be frivolous, shrewish, and stubborn. That being said, they were often better than men; at other times they seemed worse. In short, you were better off living without them. Pécuchet, for his part, had remained a bachelor.

“I’m a widower, myself,” said Bouvard. “No children.”

“Perhaps that’s just as well.” Ultimately, though, living alone could get rather depressing.

Then, at the edge of the quay, a prostitute appeared with a soldier. Ashen-faced, dark-haired, and pitted with smallpox, she was leaning on the military man’s arm, dragging her worn-out heels and swinging her hips. When she passed by, Bouvard made a smutty remark. Pécuchet turned beet-red, and no doubt to avoid answering he glanced pointedly at a priest who was coming their way.

The clergyman slowly walked down the avenue of thin elms lining the sidewalk, and Bouvard expressed relief once the man’s tricorn hat was no longer in sight, for he despised Jesuits. Pécuchet, without quite absolving them, showed some deference for religion.

Meanwhile, dusk was beginning to fall, and some window blinds facing them had been raised. The passersby increased in number. Seven o’clock sounded.

Their words flowed tirelessly, remarks following upon anecdotes, philosophical musings upon personal observations. They denigrated the Public Works department, the Tobacco Authority, business, the theater, our Navy, and the entire human race, like men who had suffered grave disappointments. Each one, listening to the other, rediscovered forgotten parts of himself. And although they had passed the age of naïve emotions, they both felt a new pleasure, a kind of blossoming, the charm of affections, newly born.

Twenty times they had stood up, sat down again, and had walked the length of the boulevard from upstream lock to downstream, each time meaning to take their leave but unable to, retained by a face of fascination.

They had nonetheless shaken hands and were about to part company when Bouvard blurted out, “How about having dinner together?”

“I was thinking the same thing!” answered Pécuchet. “But I didn’t dare suggest it.”

And he let himself be led to a cozy little restaurant opposite the town hall. Bouvard asked for the menu.

Pécuchet shied away from spices as if they would set his body on fire. This became the subject of medical discussion. After which, they praised the advances of science: so many things to know, so much research—if only one had the time! Alas, one’s livelihood absorbed it all. Their arms flew up in amazement as they nearly hugged each other across the table when they discovered they were both copy-clerks, Bouvard in a business office, Pécuchet at the Naval Ministry—which didn’t keep him from devoting a few moments to his studies every evening. He had noted some errors in Mr. Thiers’s book, and spoke with the highest respect of a certain Professor Dumouchel.