Explore "Bouvard and Pecuchet, Volume IX" by Gustave Flaubert on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Satisfied with their regimen, they desired to improve their constitutions by gymnastics; and taking up the _Manual of Amoros_, they went through its atlas. All those young lads squatting, lying back, standing, bending their legs, lifting weights, riding on beams, climbing ladders, cutting capers on trapezes -- such a display of strength and agility excited their envy.
However, they were saddened by the splendour of the gymnasium described in the preface; for they would never be able to get a vestibule for the equipages, a hippodrome for the races, a sweep of water for the swimming, or a "mountain of glory" -- an artificial hillock over one hundred feet in height.