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diff --git a/12341-0.txt b/12341-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..838c852 --- /dev/null +++ b/12341-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6770 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12341 *** + + AGAINST THE GRAIN + by + Joris-Karl Huysmans + + Translated by John Howard + + + + + Contents + + Chapter 1 + Chapter 2 + Chapter 3 + Chapter 4 + Chapter 5 + Chapter 6 + Chapter 7 + Chapter 8 + Chapter 9 + Chapter 10 + Chapter 11 + Chapter 12 + Chapter 13 + Chapter 14 + Chapter 15 + Chapter 16 + + + + + Chapter 1 + + +The Floressas Des Esseintes, to judge by the various portraits +preserved in the Chateau de Lourps, had originally been a family of +stalwart troopers and stern cavalry men. Closely arrayed, side by +side, in the old frames which their broad shoulders filled, they +startled one with the fixed gaze of their eyes, their fierce +moustaches and the chests whose deep curves filled the enormous shells +of their cuirasses. + +These were the ancestors. There were no portraits of their descendants +and a wide breach existed in the series of the faces of this race. +Only one painting served as a link to connect the past and present--a +crafty, mysterious head with haggard and gaunt features, cheekbones +punctuated with a comma of paint, the hair overspread with pearls, a +painted neck rising stiffly from the fluted ruff. + +In this representation of one of the most intimate friends of the Duc +d'Epernon and the Marquis d'O, the ravages of a sluggish and +impoverished constitution were already noticeable. + +It was obvious that the decadence of this family had followed an +unvarying course. The effemination of the males had continued with +quickened tempo. As if to conclude the work of long years, the Des +Esseintes had intermarried for two centuries, using up, in such +consanguineous unions, such strength as remained. + +There was only one living scion of this family which had once been so +numerous that it had occupied all the territories of the Ile-de-France +and La Brie. The Duc Jean was a slender, nervous young man of thirty, +with hollow cheeks, cold, steel-blue eyes, a straight, thin nose and +delicate hands. + +By a singular, atavistic reversion, the last descendant resembled the +old grandsire, from whom he had inherited the pointed, remarkably fair +beard and an ambiguous expression, at once weary and cunning. + +His childhood had been an unhappy one. Menaced with scrofula and +afflicted with relentless fevers, he yet succeeded in crossing the +breakers of adolescence, thanks to fresh air and careful attention. He +grew stronger, overcame the languors of chlorosis and reached his full +development. + +His mother, a tall, pale, taciturn woman, died of anaemia, and his +father of some uncertain malady. Des Esseintes was then seventeen +years of age. + +He retained but a vague memory of his parents and felt neither +affection nor gratitude for them. He hardly knew his father, who +usually resided in Paris. He recalled his mother as she lay motionless +in a dim room of the Chateau de Lourps. The husband and wife would +meet on rare occasions, and he remembered those lifeless interviews +when his parents sat face to face in front of a round table faintly +lit by a lamp with a wide, low-hanging shade, for the _duchesse_ could +not endure light or sound without being seized with a fit of +nervousness. A few, halting words would be exchanged between them in +the gloom and then the indifferent _duc_ would depart to meet the +first train back to Paris. + +Jean's life at the Jesuit school, where he was sent to study, was more +pleasant. At first the Fathers pampered the lad whose intelligence +astonished them. But despite their efforts, they could not induce him +to concentrate on studies requiring discipline. He nibbled at various +books and was precociously brilliant in Latin. On the contrary, he was +absolutely incapable of construing two Greek words, showed no aptitude +for living languages and promptly proved himself a dunce when obliged +to master the elements of the sciences. + +His family gave him little heed. Sometimes his father visited him at +school. "How are you . . . be good . . . study hard . . . "--and he +was gone. The lad passed the summer vacations at the Chateau de +Lourps, but his presence could not seduce his mother from her +reveries. She scarcely noticed him; when she did, her gaze would rest +on him for a moment with a sad smile--and that was all. The moment +after she would again become absorbed in the artificial night with +which the heavily curtained windows enshrouded the room. + +The servants were old and dull. Left to himself, the boy delved into +books on rainy days and roamed about the countryside on pleasant +afternoons. + +It was his supreme delight to wander down the little valley to +Jutigny, a village planted at the foot of the hills, a tiny heap of +cottages capped with thatch strewn with tufts of sengreen and clumps +of moss. In the open fields, under the shadow of high ricks, he would +lie, listening to the hollow splashing of the mills and inhaling the +fresh breeze from Voulzie. Sometimes he went as far as the peat-bogs, +to the green and black hamlet of Longueville, or climbed wind-swept +hillsides affording magnificent views. There, below to one side, as +far as the eye could reach, lay the Seine valley, blending in the +distance with the blue sky; high up, near the horizon, on the other +side, rose the churches and tower of Provins which seemed to tremble +in the golden dust of the air. + +Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By +protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, +his vague, undeveloped ideas took on form. After each vacation, Jean +returned to his masters more reflective and headstrong. These changes +did not escape them. Subtle and observant, accustomed by their +profession to plumb souls to their depths, they were fully aware of +his unresponsiveness to their teachings. They knew that this student +would never contribute to the glory of their order, and as his family +was rich and apparently careless of his future, they soon renounced +the idea of having him take up any of the professions their school +offered. Although he willingly discussed with them those theological +doctrines which intrigued his fancy by their subtleties and +hair-splittings, they did not even think of training him for the +religious orders, since, in spite of their efforts, his faith remained +languid. As a last resort, through prudence and fear of the harm he +might effect, they permitted him to pursue whatever studies pleased +him and to neglect the others, being loath to antagonize this bold and +independent spirit by the quibblings of the lay school assistants. + +Thus he lived in perfect contentment, scarcely feeling the parental +yoke of the priests. He continued his Latin and French studies when +the whim seized him and, although theology did not figure in his +schedule, he finished his apprenticeship in this science, begun at the +Chateau de Lourps, in the library bequeathed by his grand-uncle, Dom +Prosper, the old prior of the regular canons of Saint-Ruf. + +But soon the time came when he must quit the Jesuit institution. He +attained his majority and became master of his fortune. The Comte de +Montchevrel, his cousin and guardian, placed in his hands the title to +his wealth. There was no intimacy between them, for there was no +possible point of contact between these two men, the one young, the +other old. Impelled by curiosity, idleness or politeness, Des +Esseintes sometimes visited the Montchevrel family and spent some dull +evenings in their Rue de la Chaise mansion where the ladies, old as +antiquity itself, would gossip of quarterings of the noble arms, +heraldic moons and anachronistic ceremonies. + +The men, gathered around whist tables, proved even more shallow and +insignificant than the dowagers; these descendants of ancient, +courageous knights, these last branches of feudal races, appeared to +Des Esseintes as catarrhal, crazy, old men repeating inanities and +time-worn phrases. A _fleur de lis_ seemed the sole imprint on the +soft pap of their brains. + +The youth felt an unutterable pity for these mummies buried in their +elaborate hypogeums of wainscoting and grotto work, for these tedious +triflers whose eyes were forever turned towards a hazy Canaan, an +imaginary Palestine. + +After a few visits with such relatives, he resolved never again to set +foot in their homes, regardless of invitations or reproaches. + +Then he began to seek out the young men of his own age and set. + +One group, educated like himself in religious institutions, preserved +the special marks of this training. They attended religious services, +received the sacrament on Easter, frequented the Catholic circles and +concealed as criminal their amorous escapades. For the most part, they +were unintelligent, acquiescent fops, stupid bores who had tried the +patience of their professors. Yet these professors were pleased to +have bestowed such docile, pious creatures upon society. + +The other group, educated in the state colleges or in the _lycees_, +were less hypocritical and much more courageous, but they were neither +more interesting nor less bigoted. Gay young men dazzled by operettas +and races, they played lansquenet and baccarat, staked large fortunes +on horses and cards, and cultivated all the pleasures enchanting to +brainless fools. After a year's experience, Des Esseintes felt an +overpowering weariness of this company whose debaucheries seemed to +him so unrefined, facile and indiscriminate without any ardent +reactions or excitement of nerves and blood. + +He gradually forsook them to make the acquaintance of literary men, in +whom he thought he might find more interest and feel more at ease. +This, too, proved disappointing; he was revolted by their rancorous +and petty judgments, their conversation as obvious as a church door, +their dreary discussions in which they judged the value of a book by +the number of editions it had passed and by the profits acquired. At +the same time, he noticed that the free thinkers, the doctrinaires of +the bourgeoisie, people who claimed every liberty that they might +stifle the opinions of others, were greedy and shameless puritans +whom, in education, he esteemed inferior to the corner shoemaker. + +His contempt for humanity deepened. He reached the conclusion that the +world, for the most part, was composed of scoundrels and imbeciles. +Certainly, he could not hope to discover in others aspirations and +aversions similar to his own, could not expect companionship with an +intelligence exulting in a studious decrepitude, nor anticipate +meeting a mind as keen as his among the writers and scholars. + +Irritated, ill at ease and offended by the poverty of ideas given and +received, he became like those people described by Nicole--those who +are always melancholy. He would fly into a rage when he read the +patriotic and social balderdash retailed daily in the newspapers, and +would exaggerate the significance of the plaudits which a sovereign +public always reserves for works deficient in ideas and style. + +Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, +a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of +human stupidity. + +A single passion, woman, might have curbed his contempt, but that, +too, had palled on him. He had taken to carnal repasts with the +eagerness of a crotchety man affected with a depraved appetite and +given to sudden hungers, whose taste is quickly dulled and surfeited. +Associating with country squires, he had taken part in their lavish +suppers where, at dessert, tipsy women would unfasten their clothing +and strike their heads against the tables; he had haunted the green +rooms, loved actresses and singers, endured, in addition to the +natural stupidity he had come to expect of women, the maddening vanity +of female strolling players. Finally, satiated and weary of this +monotonous extravagance and the sameness of their caresses, he had +plunged into the foul depths, hoping by the contrast of squalid misery +to revive his desires and stimulate his deadened senses. + +Whatever he attempted proved vain; an unconquerable ennui oppressed +him. Yet he persisted in his excesses and returned to the perilous +embraces of accomplished mistresses. But his health failed, his +nervous system collapsed, the back of his neck grew sensitive, his +hand, still firm when it seized a heavy object, trembled when it held +a tiny glass. + +The physicians whom he consulted frightened him. It was high time to +check his excesses and renounce those pursuits which were dissipating +his reserve of strength! For a while he was at peace, but his brain +soon became over-excited. Like those young girls who, in the grip of +puberty, crave coarse and vile foods, he dreamed of and practiced +perverse loves and pleasures. This was the end! As though satisfied +with having exhausted everything, as though completely surrendering to +fatigue, his senses fell into a lethargy and impotence threatened him. + +He recovered, but he was lonely, tired, sobered, imploring an end to +his life which the cowardice of his flesh prevented him from +consummating. + +Once more he was toying with the idea of becoming a recluse, of living +in some hushed retreat where the turmoil of life would be muffled--as +in those streets covered with straw to prevent any sound from reaching +invalids. + +It was time to make up his mind. The condition of his finances +terrified him. He had spent, in acts of folly and in drinking bouts, +the greater part of his patrimony, and the remainder, invested in +land, produced a ridiculously small income. + +He decided to sell the Chateau de Lourps, which he no longer visited +and where he left no memory or regret behind. He liquidated his other +holdings, bought government bonds and in this way drew an annual +interest of fifty thousand francs; in addition, he reserved a sum of +money which he meant to use in buying and furnishing the house where +he proposed to enjoy a perfect repose. + +Exploring the suburbs of the capital, he found a place for sale at the +top of Fontenay-aux-Roses, in a secluded section near the fort, far +from any neighbors. His dream was realized! In this country place so +little violated by Parisians, he could be certain of seclusion. The +difficulty of reaching the place, due to an unreliable railroad +passing by at the end of the town, and to the little street cars which +came and went at irregular intervals, reassured him. He could picture +himself alone on the bluff, sufficiently far away to prevent the +Parisian throngs from reaching him, and yet near enough to the capital +to confirm him in his solitude. And he felt that in not entirely +closing the way, there was a chance that he would not be assailed by a +wish to return to society, seeing that it is only the impossible, the +unachievable that arouses desire. + +He put masons to work on the house he had acquired. Then, one day, +informing no one of his plans, he quickly disposed of his old +furniture, dismissed his servants, and left without giving the +concierge any address. + + + + + Chapter 2 + + +More than two months passed before Des Esseintes could bury himself in +the silent repose of his Fontenay abode. He was obliged to go to Paris +again, to comb the city in his search for the things he wanted to buy. + +What care he took, what meditations he surrendered himself to, before +turning over his house to the upholsterers! + +He had long been a connoisseur in the sincerities and evasions of +color-tones. In the days when he had entertained women at his home, he +had created a boudoir where, amid daintily carved furniture of pale, +Japanese camphor-wood, under a sort of pavillion of Indian rose-tinted +satin, the flesh would color delicately in the borrowed lights of the +silken hangings. + +This room, each of whose sides was lined with mirrors that echoed each +other all along the walls, reflecting, as far as the eye could reach, +whole series of rose boudoirs, had been celebrated among the women who +loved to immerse their nudity in this bath of warm carnation, made +fragrant with the odor of mint emanating from the exotic wood of the +furniture. + +Aside from the sensual delights for which he had designed this +chamber, this painted atmosphere which gave new color to faces grown +dull and withered by the use of ceruse and by nights of dissipation, +there were other, more personal and perverse pleasures which he +enjoyed in these languorous surroundings,--pleasures which in some way +stimulated memories of his past pains and dead ennuis. + +As a souvenir of the hated days of his childhood, he had suspended +from the ceiling a small silver-wired cage where a captive cricket +sang as if in the ashes of the chimneys of the Chateau de Lourps. +Listening to the sound he had so often heard before, he lived over +again the silent evenings spent near his mother, the wretchedness of +his suffering, repressed youth. And then, while he yielded to the +voluptuousness of the woman he mechanically caressed, whose words or +laughter tore him from his revery and rudely recalled him to the +moment, to the boudoir, to reality, a tumult arose in his soul, a need +of avenging the sad years he had endured, a mad wish to sully the +recollections of his family by shameful action, a furious desire to +pant on cushions of flesh, to drain to their last dregs the most +violent of carnal vices. + +On rainy autumnal days when melancholy oppressed him, when a hatred of +his home, the muddy yellow skies, the macadam clouds assailed him, he +took refuge in this retreat, set the cage lightly in motion and +watched it endlessly reflected in the play of the mirrors, until it +seemed to his dazed eyes that the cage no longer stirred, but that the +boudoir reeled and turned, filling the house with a rose-colored +waltz. + +In the days when he had deemed it necessary to affect singularity, Des +Esseintes had designed marvelously strange furnishings, dividing his +salon into a series of alcoves hung with varied tapestries to relate +by a subtle analogy, by a vague harmony of joyous or sombre, delicate +or barbaric colors to the character of the Latin or French books he +loved. And he would seclude himself in turn in the particular recess +whose _decor_ seemed best to correspond with the very essence of the +work his caprice of the moment induced him to read. + +He had constructed, too, a lofty high room intended for the reception +of his tradesmen. Here they were ushered in and seated alongside each +other in church pews, while from a pulpit he preached to them a sermon +on dandyism, adjuring his bootmakers and tailors implicitly to obey +his briefs in the matter of style, threatening them with pecuniary +excommunication if they failed to follow to the letter the +instructions contained in his monitories and bulls. + +He acquired the reputation of an eccentric, which he enhanced by +wearing costumes of white velvet, and gold-embroidered waistcoats, by +inserting, in place of a cravat, a Parma bouquet in the opening of his +shirt, by giving famous dinners to men of letters, one of which, a +revival of the eighteenth century, celebrating the most futile of his +misadventures, was a funeral repast. + +In the dining room, hung in black and opening on the transformed +garden with its ash-powdered walks, its little pool now bordered with +basalt and filled with ink, its clumps of cypresses and pines, the +dinner had been served on a table draped in black, adorned with +baskets of violets and scabiouses, lit by candelabra from which green +flames blazed, and by chandeliers from which wax tapers flared. + +To the sound of funeral marches played by a concealed orchestra, nude +negresses, wearing slippers and stockings of silver cloth with +patterns of tears, served the guests. + +Out of black-edged plates they had drunk turtle soup and eaten Russian +rye bread, ripe Turkish olives, caviar, smoked Frankfort black +pudding, game with sauces that were the color of licorice and +blacking, truffle gravy, chocolate cream, puddings, nectarines, grape +preserves, mulberries and black-heart cherries; they had sipped, out +of dark glasses, wines from Limagne, Roussillon, Tenedos, Val de Penas +and Porto, and after the coffee and walnut brandy had partaken of kvas +and porter and stout. + +The farewell dinner to a temporarily dead virility--this was what he +had written on invitation cards designed like bereavement notices. + +But he was done with those extravagances in which he had once gloried. +Today, he was filled with a contempt for those juvenile displays, the +singular apparel, the appointments of his bizarre chambers. He +contented himself with planning, for his own pleasure, and no longer +for the astonishment of others, an interior that should be comfortable +although embellished in a rare style; with building a curious, calm +retreat to serve the needs of his future solitude. + +When the Fontenay house was in readiness, fitted up by an architect +according to his plans, when all that remained was to determine the +color scheme, he again devoted himself to long speculations. + +He desired colors whose expressiveness would be displayed in the +artificial light of lamps. To him it mattered not at all if they were +lifeless or crude in daylight, for it was at night that he lived, +feeling more completely alone then, feeling that only under the +protective covering of darkness did the mind grow really animated and +active. He also experienced a peculiar pleasure in being in a richly +illuminated room, the only patch of light amid the shadow-haunted, +sleeping houses. This was a form of enjoyment in which perhaps entered +an element of vanity, that peculiar pleasure known to late workers +when, drawing aside the window curtains, they perceive that everything +about them is extinguished, silent, dead. + +Slowly, one by one, he selected the colors. + +Blue inclines to a false green by candle light: if it is dark, like +cobalt or indigo, it turns black; if it is bright, it turns grey; if +it is soft, like turquoise, it grows feeble and faded. + +There could be no question of making it the dominant note of a room +unless it were blended with some other color. + +Iron grey always frowns and is heavy; pearl grey loses its blue and +changes to a muddy white; brown is lifeless and cold; as for deep +green, such as emperor or myrtle, it has the same properties as blue +and merges into black. There remained, then, the paler greens, such as +peacock, cinnabar or lacquer, but the light banishes their blues and +brings out their yellows in tones that have a false and undecided +quality. + +No need to waste thought on the salmon, the maize and rose colors +whose feminine associations oppose all ideas of isolation! No need to +consider the violet which is completely neutralized at night; only the +red in it holds its ground--and what a red! a viscous red like the +lees of wine. Besides, it seemed useless to employ this color, for by +using a certain amount of santonin, he could get an effect of violet +on his hangings. + +These colors disposed of, only three remained: red, orange, yellow. + +Of these, he preferred orange, thus by his own example confirming the +truth of a theory which he declared had almost mathematical +correctness--the theory that a harmony exists between the sensual +nature of a truly artistic individual and the color which most vividly +impresses him. + +Disregarding entirely the generality of men whose gross retinas are +capable of perceiving neither the cadence peculiar to each color nor +the mysterious charm of their nuances of light and shade; ignoring the +bourgeoisie, whose eyes are insensible to the pomp and splendor of +strong, vibrant tones; and devoting himself only to people with +sensitive pupils, refined by literature and art, he was convinced that +the eyes of those among them who dream of the ideal and demand +illusions are generally caressed by blue and its derivatives, mauve, +lilac and pearl grey, provided always that these colors remain soft +and do not overstep the bounds where they lose their personalities by +being transformed into pure violets and frank greys. + +Those persons, on the contrary, who are energetic and incisive, the +plethoric, red-blooded, strong males who fling themselves unthinkingly +into the affair of the moment, generally delight in the bold gleams of +yellows and reds, the clashing cymbals of vermilions and chromes that +blind and intoxicate them. + +But the eyes of enfeebled and nervous persons whose sensual appetites +crave highly seasoned foods, the eyes of hectic and over-excited +creatures have a predilection toward that irritating and morbid color +with its fictitious splendors, its acid fevers--orange. + +Thus, there could be no question about Des Esseintes' choice, but +unquestionable difficulties still arose. If red and yellow are +heightened by light, the same does not always hold true of their +compound, orange, which often seems to ignite and turns to nasturtium, +to a flaming red. + +He studied all their nuances by candlelight, discovering a shade +which, it seemed to him, would not lose its dominant tone, but would +stand every test required of it. These preliminaries completed, he +sought to refrain from using, for his study at least, oriental stuffs +and rugs which have become cheapened and ordinary, now that rich +merchants can easily pick them up at auctions and shops. + +He finally decided to bind his walls, like books, with coarse-grained +morocco, with Cape skin, polished by strong steel plates under a +powerful press. + +When the wainscoting was finished, he had the moulding and high +plinths painted in indigo, a lacquered indigo like that which +coachmakers employ for carriage panels. The ceiling, slightly rounded, +was also lined with morocco. In the center was a wide opening +resembling an immense bull's eye encased in orange skin--a circle of +the firmament worked out on a background of king blue silk on which +were woven silver seraphim with out-stretched wings. This material had +long before been embroidered by the Cologne guild of weavers for an +old cope. + +The setting was complete. At night the room subsided into a restful, +soothing harmony. The wainscoting preserved its blue which seemed +sustained and warmed by the orange. And the orange remained pure, +strengthened and fanned as it was by the insistent breath of the +blues. + +Des Esseintes was not deeply concerned about the furniture itself. The +only luxuries in the room were books and rare flowers. He limited +himself to these things, intending later on to hang a few drawings or +paintings on the panels which remained bare; to place shelves and book +racks of ebony around the walls; to spread the pelts of wild beasts +and the skins of blue fox on the floor; to install, near a massive +fifteenth century counting-table, deep armchairs and an old chapel +reading-desk of forged iron, one of those old lecterns on which the +deacon formerly placed the antiphonary and which now supported one of +the heavy folios of Du Cange's _Glossarium mediae et infimae +latinitatis_. + +The windows whose blue fissured panes, stippled with fragments of +gold-edged bottles, intercepted the view of the country and only +permitted a faint light to enter, were draped with curtains cut from +old stoles of dark and reddish gold neutralized by an almost dead +russet woven in the pattern. + +The mantel shelf was sumptuously draped with the remnant of a +Florentine dalmatica. Between two gilded copper monstrances of +Byzantine style, originally brought from the old Abbaye-au-Bois de +Bievre, stood a marvelous church canon divided into three separate +compartments delicately wrought like lace work. It contained, under +its glass frame, three works of Baudelaire copied on real vellum, with +wonderful missal letters and splendid coloring: to the right and left, +the sonnets bearing the titles of _La Mort des Amants_ and _L'Ennemi_; +in the center, the prose poem entitled, _Anywhere Out of the +World--n'importe ou, hors du monde_. + + + + + Chapter 3 + + +After selling his effects, Des Esseintes retained the two old +domestics who had tended his mother and filled the offices of steward +and house porter at the Chateau de Lourps, which had remained deserted +and uninhabited until its disposal. + +These servants he brought to Fontenay. They were accustomed to the +regular life of hospital attendants hourly serving the patients their +stipulated food and drink, to the rigid silence of cloistral monks who +live behind barred doors and windows, having no communication with the +outside world. + +The man was assigned the task of keeping the house in order and of +procuring provisions, the woman that of preparing the food. He +surrendered the second story to them, forced them to wear heavy felt +coverings over their shoes, put sound mufflers along the well-oiled +doors and covered their floor with heavy rugs so that he would never +hear their footsteps overhead. + +He devised an elaborate signal code of bells whereby his wants were +made known. He pointed out the exact spot on his bureau where they +were to place the account book each month while he slept. In short, +matters were arranged in such wise that he would not be obliged to see +or to converse with them very often. + +Nevertheless, since the woman had occasion to walk past the house so +as to reach the woodshed, he wished to make sure that her shadow, as +she passed his windows, would not offend him. He had designed for her +a costume of Flemish silk with a white bonnet and large, black, +lowered hood, such as is still worn by the nuns of Ghent. The shadow +of this headdress, in the twilight, gave him the sensation of being in +a cloister, brought back memories of silent, holy villages, dead +quarters enclosed and buried in some quiet corner of a bustling town. + +The hours of eating were also regulated. His instructions in this +regard were short and explicit, for the weakened state of his stomach +no longer permitted him to absorb heavy or varied foods. + +In winter, at five o'clock in the afternoon, when the day was drawing +to a close, he breakfasted on two boiled eggs, toast and tea. At +eleven o'clock he dined. During the night he drank coffee, and +sometimes tea and wine, and at five o'clock in the morning, before +retiring, he supped again lightly. + +His meals, which were planned and ordered once for all at the +beginning of each season, were served him on a table in the middle of +a small room separated from his study by a padded corridor, +hermetically sealed so as to permit neither sound nor odor to filter +into either of the two rooms it joined. + +With its vaulted ceiling fitted with beams in a half circle, its +bulkheads and floor of pine, and the little window in the wainscoting +that looked like a porthole, the dining room resembled the cabin of a +ship. + +Like those Japanese boxes which fit into each other, this room was +inserted in a larger apartment--the real dining room constructed by +the architect. + +It was pierced by two windows. One of them was invisible, hidden by a +partition which could, however, be lowered by a spring so as to permit +fresh air to circulate around this pinewood box and to penetrate into +it. The other was visible, placed directly opposite the porthole built +in the wainscoting, but it was blocked up. For a long aquarium +occupied the entire space between the porthole and the genuine window +placed in the outer wall. Thus the light, in order to brighten the +room, traversed the window, whose panes had been replaced by a plate +glass, the water, and, lastly, the window of the porthole. + +In autumn, at sunset, when the steam rose from the samovar on the +table, the water of the aquarium, wan and glassy all during the +morning, reddened like blazing gleams of embers and lapped restlessly +against the light-colored wood. + +Sometimes, when it chanced that Des Esseintes was awake in the +afternoon, he operated the stops of the pipes and conduits which +emptied the aquarium, replacing it with pure water. Into this, he +poured drops of colored liquids that made it green or brackish, +opaline or silvery--tones similar to those of rivers which reflect the +color of the sky, the intensity of the sun, the menace of rain--which +reflect, in a word, the state of the season and atmosphere. + +When he did this, he imagined himself on a brig, between decks, and +curiously he contemplated the marvelous, mechanical fish, wound like +clocks, which passed before the porthole or clung to the artificial +sea-weed. While he inhaled the odor of tar, introduced into the room +shortly before his arrival, he examined colored engravings, hung on +the walls, which represented, just as at Lloyd's office and the +steamship agencies, steamers bound for Valparaiso and La Platte, and +looked at framed pictures on which were inscribed the itineraries of +the Royal Mail Steam Packet, the Lopez and the Valery Companies, the +freight and port calls of the Atlantic mail boats. + +If he tired of consulting these guides, he could rest his eyes by +gazing at the chronometers and sea compasses, the sextants, field +glasses and cards strewn on a table on which stood a single volume, +bound in sealskin. The book was "The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym", +specially printed for him on laid paper, each sheet carefully +selected, with a sea-gull watermark. + +Or, he could look at fishing rods, tan-colored nets, rolls of russet +sail, a tiny, black-painted cork anchor--all thrown in a heap near the +door communicating with the kitchen by a passage furnished with +cappadine silk which reabsorbed, just as in the corridor which +connected the dining room with his study, every odor and sound. + +Thus, without stirring, he enjoyed the rapid motions of a long sea +voyage. The pleasure of travel, which only exists as a matter of fact +in retrospect and seldom in the present, at the instant when it is +being experienced, he could fully relish at his ease, without the +necessity of fatigue or confusion, here in this cabin whose studied +disorder, whose transitory appearance and whose seemingly temporary +furnishings corresponded so well with the briefness of the time he +spent there on his meals, and contrasted so perfectly with his study, +a well-arranged, well-furnished room where everything betokened a +retired, orderly existence. + +Movement, after all, seemed futile to him. He felt that imagination +could easily be substituted for the vulgar realities of things. It was +possible, in his opinion, to gratify the most extravagant, absurd +desires by a subtle subterfuge, by a slight modification of the object +of one's wishes. Every epicure nowadays enjoys, in restaurants +celebrated for the excellence of their cellars, wines of capital taste +manufactured from inferior brands treated by Pasteur's method. For +they have the same aroma, the same color, the same bouquet as the rare +wines of which they are an imitation, and consequently the pleasure +experienced in sipping them is identical. The originals, moreover, are +usually unprocurable, for love or money. + +Transposing this insidious deviation, this adroit deceit into the +realm of the intellect, there was not the shadow of a doubt that +fanciful delights resembling the true in every detail, could be +enjoyed. One could revel, for instance, in long explorations while +near one's own fireside, stimulating the restive or sluggish mind, if +need be, by reading some suggestive narrative of travel in distant +lands. One could enjoy the beneficent results of a sea bath, too, even +in Paris. All that is necessary is to visit the Vigier baths situated +in a boat on the Seine, far from the shore. + +There, the illusion of the sea is undeniable, imperious, positive. It +is achieved by salting the water of the bath; by mixing, according to +the Codex formula, sulphate of soda, hydrochlorate of magnesia and +lime; by extracting from a box, carefully closed by means of a screw, +a ball of thread or a very small piece of cable which had been +specially procured from one of those great rope-making establishments +whose vast warehouses and basements are heavy with odors of the sea +and the port; by inhaling these perfumes held by the ball or the cable +end; by consulting an exact photograph of the casino; by eagerly +reading the Joanne guide describing the beauties of the seashore where +one would wish to be; by being rocked on the waves, made by the eddy +of fly boats lapping against the pontoon of baths; by listening to the +plaint of the wind under the arches, or to the hollow murmur of the +omnibuses passing above on the Port Royal, two steps away. + +The secret lies in knowing how to proceed, how to concentrate deeply +enough to produce the hallucination and succeed in substituting the +dream reality for the reality itself. + +Artifice, besides, seemed to Des Esseintes the final distinctive mark +of man's genius. + +Nature had had her day, as he put it. By the disgusting sameness of +her landscapes and skies, she had once for all wearied the considerate +patience of aesthetes. Really, what dullness! the dullness of the +specialist confined to his narrow work. What manners! the manners of +the tradesman offering one particular ware to the exclusion of all +others. What a monotonous storehouse of fields and trees! What a banal +agency of mountains and seas! + +There is not one of her inventions, no matter how subtle or imposing +it may be, which human genius cannot create; no Fontainebleau forest, +no moonlight which a scenic setting flooded with electricity cannot +produce; no waterfall which hydraulics cannot imitate to perfection; +no rock which pasteboard cannot be made to resemble; no flower which +taffetas and delicately painted papers cannot simulate. + +There can be no doubt about it: this eternal, driveling, old woman is +no longer admired by true artists, and the moment has come to replace +her by artifice. + +Closely observe that work of hers which is considered the most +exquisite, that creation of hers whose beauty is everywhere conceded +the most perfect and original--woman. Has not man made, for his own +use, an animated and artificial being which easily equals woman, from +the point of view of plastic beauty? Is there a woman, whose form is +more dazzling, more splendid than the two locomotives that pass over +the Northern Railroad lines? + +One, the Crampton, is an adorable, shrill-voiced blonde, a trim, +gilded blonde, with a large, fragile body imprisoned in a glittering +corset of copper, and having the long, sinewy lines of a cat. Her +extraordinary grace is frightening, as, with the sweat of her hot +sides rising upwards and her steel muscles stiffening, she puts in +motion the immense rose-window of her fine wheels and darts forward, +mettlesome, along rapids and floods. + +The other, the Engerth, is a nobly proportioned dusky brunette +emitting raucous, muffled cries. Her heavy loins are strangled in a +cast-iron breast-plate. A monstrous beast with a disheveled mane of +black smoke and with six low, coupled wheels! What irresistible power +she has when, causing the earth to tremble, she slowly and heavily +drags the unwieldy queue of her merchandise! + +Unquestionably, there is not one among the frail blondes and majestic +brunettes of the flesh that can vie with their delicate grace and +terrific strength. + +Such were Des Esseintes' reflections when the breeze brought him the +faint whistle of the toy railroad winding playfully, like a spinning +top, between Paris and Sceaux. His house was situated at a twenty +minutes' walk from the Fontenay station, but the height on which it +was perched, its isolation, made it immune to the clatter of the noisy +rabble which the vicinity of a railway station invariably attracts on +a Sunday. + +As for the village itself, he hardly knew it. One night he had gazed +through his window at the silent landscape which slowly unfolded, as +it dipped to the foot of a slope, on whose summit the batteries of the +Verrieres woods were trained. + +In the darkness, to left and right, these masses, dim and confused, +rose tier on tier, dominated far off by other batteries and forts +whose high embankments seemed, in the moonlight, bathed in silver +against the sombre sky. + +Where the plain did not fall under the shadow of the hills, it seemed +powdered with starch and smeared with white cold cream. In the warm +air that fanned the faded grasses and exhaled a spicy perfume, the +trees, chalky white under the moon, shook their pale leaves, and +seemed to divide their trunks, whose shadows formed bars of black on +the plaster-like ground where pebbles scintillated like glittering +plates. + +Because of its enameled look and its artificial air, the landscape did +not displease Des Esseintes. But since that afternoon spent at +Fontenay in search of a house, he had never ventured along its roads +in daylight. The verdure of this region inspired him with no interest +whatever, for it did not have the delicate and doleful charm of the +sickly and pathetic vegetation which forces its way painfully through +the rubbish heaps of the mounds which had once served as the ramparts +of Paris. That day, in the village, he had perceived corpulent, +bewhiskered _bourgeois_ citizens and moustached uniformed men with +heads of magistrates and soldiers, which they held as stiffly as +monstrances in churches. And ever since that encounter, his +detestation of the human face had been augmented. + +During the last month of his stay in Paris, when he was weary of +everything, afflicted with hypochondria, the prey of melancholia, when +his nerves had become so sensitive that the sight of an unpleasant +object or person impressed itself deeply on his brain--so deeply that +several days were required before the impression could be effaced--the +touch of a human body brushing against him in the street had been an +excruciating agony. + +The very sight of certain faces made him suffer. He considered the +crabbed expressions of some, insulting. He felt a desire to slap the +fellow who walked, eyes closed, with such a learned air; the one who +minced along, smiling at his image in the window panes; and the one +who seemed stimulated by a whole world of thought while devouring, +with contracted brow, the tedious contents of a newspaper. + +Such an inveterate stupidity, such a scorn for literature and art, +such a hatred for all the ideas he worshipped, were implanted and +anchored in these merchant minds, exclusively preoccupied with the +business of swindling and money-making, and accessible only to ideas +of politics--that base distraction of mediocrities--that he returned +enraged to his home and locked himself in with his books. + +He hated the new generation with all the energy in him. They were +frightful clodhoppers who seemed to find it necessary to talk and +laugh boisterously in restaurants and cafes. They jostled you on +sidewalks without begging pardon. They pushed the wheels of their +perambulators against your legs, without even apologizing. + + + + + Chapter 4 + + +A portion of the shelves which lined the walls of his orange and blue +study was devoted exclusively to those Latin works assigned to the +generic period of "The Decadence" by those whose minds have absorbed +the deplorable teachings of the Sorbonne. + +The Latin written in that era which professors still persist in +calling the Great Age, hardly stimulated Des Esseintes. With its +carefully premeditated style, its sameness, its stripping of supple +syntax, its poverty of color and nuance, this language, pruned of all +the rugged and often rich expressions of the preceding ages, was +confined to the enunciation of the majestic banalities, the empty +commonplaces tiresomely reiterated by the rhetoricians and poets; but +it betrayed such a lack of curiosity and such a humdrum tediousness, +such a drabness, feebleness and jaded solemnity that to find its +equal, it was necessary, in linguistic studies, to go to the French +style of the period of Louis XIV. + +The gentle Vergil, whom instructors call the Mantuan swan, perhaps +because he was not born in that city, he considered one of the most +terrible pedants ever produced by antiquity. Des Esseintes was +exasperated by his immaculate and bedizened shepherds, his Orpheus +whom he compares to a weeping nightingale, his Aristaeus who simpers +about bees, his Aeneas, that weak-willed, irresolute person who walks +with wooden gestures through the length of the poem. Des Esseintes +would gladly have accepted the tedious nonsense which those +marionettes exchange with each other off-stage; or even the poet's +impudent borrowings from Homer, Theocritus, Ennius and Lucretius; the +plain theft, revealed to us by Macrobius, of the second song of the +_Aeneid_, copied almost word for word from one of Pisander's poems; in +fine, all the unutterable emptiness of this heap of verses. The thing +he could not forgive, however, and which infuriated him most, was the +workmanship of the hexameters, beating like empty tin cans and +extending their syllabic quantities measured according to the +unchanging rule of a pedantic and dull prosody. He disliked the +texture of those stiff verses, in their official garb, their abject +reverence for grammar, their mechanical division by imperturbable +caesuras, always plugged at the end in the same way by the impact of a +dactyl against a spondee. + +Borrowed from the perfected forge of Catullus, this unvarying +versification, lacking imagination, lacking pity, padded with useless +words and refuse, with pegs of identical and anticipated assonances, +this ceaseless wretchedness of Homeric epithet which designates +nothing whatever and permits nothing to be seen, all this impoverished +vocabulary of muffled, lifeless tones bored him beyond measure. + +It is no more than just to add that, if his admiration for Vergil was +quite restrained, and his attraction for Ovid's lucid outpourings even +more circumspect, there was no limit to his disgust at the elephantine +graces of Horace, at the prattle of this hopeless lout who smirkingly +utters the broad, crude jests of an old clown. + +Neither was he pleased, in prose, with the verbosities, the redundant +metaphors, the ludicrous digressions of Cicero. There was nothing to +beguile him in the boasting of his apostrophes, in the flow of his +patriotic nonsense, in the emphasis of his harangues, in the +ponderousness of his style, fleshy but ropy and lacking in marrow and +bone, in the insupportable dross of his long adverbs with which he +introduces phrases, in the unalterable formula of his adipose periods +badly sewed together with the thread of conjunctions and, finally, in +his wearisome habits of tautology. Nor was his enthusiasm wakened for +Caesar, celebrated for his laconic style. Here, on the contrary, was +disclosed a surprising aridity, a sterility of recollection, an +incredibly undue constipation. + +He found pasture neither among them nor among those writers who are +peculiarly the delight of the spuriously literate: Sallust, who is +less colorless than the others; sentimental and pompous Titus Livius; +turgid and lurid Seneca; watery and larval Suetonius; Tacitus who, in +his studied conciseness, is the keenest, most wiry and muscular of +them all. In poetry, he was untouched by Juvenal, despite some +roughshod verses, and by Persius, despite his mysterious insinuations. +In neglecting Tibullus and Propertius, Quintilian and the Plinies, +Statius, Martial, even Terence and Plautus whose jargon full of +neologisms, compound words and diminutives, could please him, but +whose low comedy and gross humor he loathed, Des Esseintes only began +to be interested in the Latin language with Lucan. Here it was +liberated, already more expressive and less dull. This careful armor, +these verses plated with enamel and studded with jewels, captivated +him, but the exclusive preoccupation with form, the sonorities of +tone, the clangor of metals, did not entirely conceal from him the +emptiness of the thought, the turgidity of those blisters which emboss +the skin of the _Pharsale_. + +Petronius was the author whom he truly loved and who caused him +forever to abandon the sonorous ingenuities of Lucan, for he was a +keen observer, a delicate analyst, a marvelous painter. Tranquilly, +without prejudice or hate, he described Rome's daily life, recounting +the customs of his epoch in the sprightly little chapters of the +_Satyricon_. + +Observing the facts of life, stating them in clear, definite form, he +revealed the petty existence of the people, their happenings, their +bestialities, their passions. + +One glimpses the inspector of furnished lodgings who has inquired +after the newly arrived travellers; bawdy houses where men prowl +around nude women, while through the half-open doors of the rooms +couples can be seen in dalliance; the society of the time, in villas +of an insolent luxury, a revel of richness and magnificence, or in the +poor quarters with their rumpled, bug-ridden folding-beds; impure +sharpers, like Ascylte and Eumolpe in search of a rich windfall; old +incubi with tucked-up dresses and plastered cheeks of white lead and +red acacia; plump, curled, depraved little girls of sixteen; women who +are the prey of hysterical attacks; hunters of heritages offering +their sons and daughters to debauched testators. All pass across the +pages. They debate in the streets, rub elbows in the baths, beat each +other unmercifully as in a pantomime. + +And all this recounted in a style of strange freshness and precise +color, drawing from all dialects, borrowing expressions from all the +languages that were drifting into Rome, extending all the limits, +removing all the handicaps of the so-called Great Age. He made each +person speak his own idiom: the uneducated freedmen, the vulgar Latin +argot of the streets; the strangers, their barbarous patois, the +corrupt speech of the African, Syrian and Greek; imbecile pedants, +like the Agamemnon of the book, a rhetoric of artificial words. These +people are depicted with swift strokes, wallowing around tables, +exchanging stupid, drunken speech, uttering senile maxims and inept +proverbs. + +This realistic novel, this slice of Roman life, without any +preoccupation, whatever one may say of it, with reform and satire, +without the need of any studied end, or of morality; this story +without intrigue or action, portraying the adventures of evil persons, +analyzing with a calm finesse the joys and sorrows of these lovers and +couples, depicting life in a splendidly wrought language without +surrendering himself to any commentary, without approving or cursing +the acts and thoughts of his characters, the vices of a decrepit +civilization, of an empire that cracks, struck Des Esseintes. In the +keenness of the observation, in the firmness of the method, he found +singular comparisons, curious analogies with the few modern French +novels he could endure. + +Certainly, he bitterly regretted the _Eustion_ and the _Albutiae_, +those two works by Petronius mentioned by Planciade Fulgence which are +forever lost. But the bibliophile in him consoled the student, when he +touched with worshipful hands the superb edition of the _Satyricon_ +which he possessed, the octavo bearing the date 1585 and the name of +J. Dousa of Leyden. + +Leaving Petronius, his Latin collection entered into the second +century of the Christian era, passed over Fronto, the declaimer, with +his antiquated terms; skipped the _Attic Nights_ of Aulus Gellius, his +disciple and friend,--a clever, ferreting mind, but a writer entangled +in a glutinous vase; and halted at Apuleius, of whose works he owned +the first edition printed at Rome in 1469. + +This African delighted him. The Latin language was at its richest in +the _Metamorphoses_; it contained ooze and rubbish-strewn water +rushing from all the provinces, and the refuse mingled and was +confused in a bizarre, exotic, almost new color. Mannerisms, new +details of Latin society found themselves shaped into neologisms +specially created for the needs of conversation, in a Roman corner of +Africa. He was amused by the southern exuberance and joviality of a +doubtlessly corpulent man. He seemed a salacious, gay crony compared +with the Christian apologists who lived in the same century--the +soporific Minucius Felix, a pseudo-classicist, pouring forth the still +thick emulsions of Cicero into his _Octavius_; nay, even +Tertullian--whom he perhaps preserved for his Aldine edition, more +than for the work itself. + +Although he was sufficiently versed in theology, the disputes of the +Montanists against the Catholic Church, the polemics against the +gnostics, left him cold. Despite Tertullian's curious, concise style +full of ambiguous terms, resting on participles, clashing with +oppositions, bristling with puns and witticisms, dappled with vocables +culled from the juridical science and the language of the Fathers of +the Greek Church, he now hardly ever opened the _Apologetica_ and the +_Treatise on Patience_. At the most, he read several pages of _De +culta feminarum_, where Tertullian counsels women not to bedeck +themselves with jewels and precious stuffs, forbidding them the use of +cosmetics, because these attempt to correct and improve nature. + +These ideas, diametrically opposed to his own, made him smile. Then +the role played by Tertullian, in his Carthage bishopric, seemed to +him suggestive in pleasant reveries. More even than his works did the +man attract him. + +He had, in fact, lived in stormy times, agitated by frightful +disorders, under Caracalla, under Macrinus, under the astonishing High +Priest of Emesa, Elagabalus, and he tranquilly prepared his sermons, +his dogmatic writings, his pleadings, his homelies, while the Roman +Empire shook on its foundations, while the follies of Asia, while the +ordures of paganism were full to the brim. With the utmost sang-froid, +he recommended carnal abstinence, frugality in food, sobriety in +dress, while, walking in silver powder and golden sand, a tiara on his +head, his garb figured with precious stones, Elagabalus worked, amid +his eunuchs, at womanish labor, calling himself the Empress and +changing, every night, his Emperor, whom he preferably chose among +barbers, scullions and circus drivers. + +This antithesis delighted him. Then the Latin language, arrived at its +supreme maturity under Petronius, commenced to decay; the Christian +literature replaced it, bringing new words with new ideas, unemployed +constructions, strange verbs, adjectives with subtle meanings, +abstract words until then rare in the Roman language and whose usage +Tertullian had been one of the first to adopt. + +But there was no attraction in this dissolution, continued after +Tertullian's death by his pupil, Saint Cyprian, by Arnobius and by +Lactantius. There was something lacking; it made clumsy returns to +Ciceronian magniloquence, but had not yet acquired that special flavor +which in the fourth century, and particularly during the centuries +following, the odor of Christianity would give the pagan tongue, +decomposed like old venison, crumbling at the same time that the old +world civilization collapsed, and the Empires, putrefied by the sanies +of the centuries, succumbed to the thrusts of the barbarians. + +Only one Christian poet, Commodianus, represented the third century in +his library. The _Carmen apologeticum_, written in 259, is a +collection of instructions, twisted into acrostics, in popular +hexameters, with caesuras introduced according to the heroic verse +style, composed without regard to quantity or hiatus and often +accompanied by such rhymes as the Church Latin would later supply in +such abundance. + +These sombre, tortuous, gamy verses, crammed with terms of ordinary +speech, with words diverted from their primitive meaning, claimed and +interested him even more than the soft and already green style of the +historians, Ammianus Marcellinus and Aurelius Victorus, Symmachus the +letter writer, and Macrobius the grammarian and compiler. Them he even +preferred to the genuinely scanned lines, the spotted and superb +language of Claudian, Rutilius and Ausonius. + +They were then the masters of art. They filled the dying Empire with +their cries; the Christian Ausonius with his _Centon Nuptial_, and his +exuberant, embellished _Mosella_; Rutilius, with his hymns to the +glory of Rome, his anathemas against the Jews and the monks, his +journey from Italy into Gaul and the impressions recorded along the +way, the intervals of landscape reflected in the water, the mirage of +vapors and the movement of mists that enveloped the mountains. + +Claudian, a sort of avatar of Lucan, dominates the fourth century with +the terrible clarion of his verses: a poet forging a loud and sonorous +hexameter, striking the epithet with a sharp blow amid sheaves of +sparks, achieving a certain grandeur which fills his work with a +powerful breath. In the Occidental Empire tottering more and more in +the perpetual menace of the Barbarians now pressing in hordes at the +Empire's yielding gates, he revives antiquity, sings of the abduction +of Proserpine, lays on his vibrant colors and passes with all his +torches alight, into the obscurity that was then engulfing his world. + +Paganism again lives in his verse, sounding its last fanfare, lifting +its last great poet above the Christianity which was soon entirely to +submerge the language, and which would forever be sole master of art. +The new Christian spirit arose with Paulinus, disciple of Ausonius; +Juvencus, who paraphrases the gospels in verse; Victorinus, author of +the _Maccabees_; Sanctus Burdigalensis who, in an eclogue imitated +from Vergil, makes his shepherds Egon and Buculus lament the maladies +of their flock; and all the saints: Hilaire of Poitiers, defender of +the Nicean faith, the Athanasius of the Occident, as he has been +called; Ambrosius, author of the indigestible homelies, the wearisome +Christian Cicero; Damasus, maker of lapidary epigrams; Jerome, +translator of the Vulgate, and his adversary Vigilantius, who attacks +the cult of saints and the abuse of miracles and fastings, and already +preaches, with arguments which future ages were to repeat, against the +monastic vows and celibacy of the priests. + +Finally, in the fifth century came Augustine, bishop of Hippo. Des +Esseintes knew him only too well, for he was the Church's most reputed +writer, founder of Christian orthodoxy, considered an oracle and +sovereign master by Catholics. He no longer opened the pages of this +holy man's works, although he had sung his disgust of the earth in the +_Confessions_, and although his lamenting piety had essayed, in the +_City of God_, to mitigate the frightful distress of the times by +sedative promises of a rosier future. When Des Esseintes had studied +theology, he was already sick and weary of the old monk's preachings +and jeremiads, his theories on predestination and grace, his combats +against the schisms. + +He preferred to thumb the _Psychomachia_ of Prudentius, that first +type of the allegorical poem which was later, in the Middle Ages, to +be used continually, and the works of Sidonius Apollinaris whose +correspondence interlarded with flashes of wit, pungencies, archaisms +and enigmas, allured him. He willingly re-read the panegyrics in which +this bishop invokes pagan deities in substantiation of his +vainglorious eulogies; and, in spite of everything, he confessed a +weakness for the affectations of these verses, fabricated, as it were, +by an ingenious mechanician who operates his machine, oils his wheels +and invents intricate and useless parts. + +After Sidonius, he sought Merobaudes, the panegyrist; Sedulius, author +of the rhymed poems and abecedarian hymns, certain passages of which +the Church has appropriated for its services; Marius Victorius, whose +gloomy treatise on the _Pervesity of the Times_ is illumed, here and +there, with verses that gleam with phosphorescence; Paulinus of Pella, +poet of the shivering _Eucharisticon_; and Orientius, bishop of Auch, +who, in the distichs of his _Monitories_, inveighs against the +licentiousness of women whose faces, he claims, corrupt the people. + +The interest which Des Esseintes felt for the Latin language did not +pause at this period which found it drooping, thoroughly putrid, +losing its members and dropping its pus, and barely preserving through +all the corruption of its body, those still firm elements which the +Christians detached to marinate in the brine of their new language. + +The second half of the fifth century had arrived, the horrible epoch +when frightful motions convulsed the earth. The Barbarians sacked +Gaul. Paralyzed Rome, pillaged by the Visigoths, felt its life grow +feeble, perceived its extremities, the occident and the orient, writhe +in blood and grow more exhausted from day to day. + +In this general dissolution, in the successive assassination of the +Caesars, in the turmoil of carnage from one end of Europe to another, +there resounded a terrible shout of triumph, stifling all clamors, +silencing all voices. On the banks of the Danube, thousands of men +astride on small horses, clad in rat-skin coats, monstrous Tartars +with enormous heads, flat noses, chins gullied with scars and gashes, +and jaundiced faces bare of hair, rushed at full speed to envelop the +territories of the Lower Empire like a whirlwind. + +Everything disappeared in the dust of their gallopings, in the smoke +of the conflagrations. Darkness fell, and the amazed people trembled, +as they heard the fearful tornado which passed with thunder crashes. +The hordes of Huns razed Europe, rushed toward Gaul, overran the +plains of Chalons where Aetius pillaged it in an awful charge. The +plains, gorged with blood, foamed like a purple sea. Two hundred +thousand corpses barred the way, broke the movement of this avalanche +which, swerving, fell with mighty thunderclaps, against Italy whose +exterminated towns flamed like burning bricks. + +The Occidental Empire crumbled beneath the shock; the moribund life +which it was pursuing to imbecility and foulness, was extinguished. +For another reason, the end of the universe seemed near; such cities +as had been forgotten by Attila were decimated by famine and plague. +The Latin language in its turn, seemed to sink under the world's +ruins. + +Years hastened on. The Barbarian idioms began to be modulated, to +leave their vein-stones and form real languages. Latin, saved in the +debacle by the cloisters, was confined in its usage to the convents +and monasteries. + +Here and there some poets gleamed, dully and coldly: the African +Dracontius with his _Hexameron_, Claudius Memertius, with his +liturgical poetry; Avitus of Vienne; then, the biographers like +Ennodius, who narrates the prodigies of that perspicacious and +venerated diplomat, Saint Epiphanius, the upright and vigilant pastor; +or like Eugippus, who tells of the life of Saint Severin, that +mysterious hermit and humble ascetic who appeared like an angel of +grace to the distressed people, mad with suffering and fear; writers +like Veranius of Gevaudan who prepared a little treatise on +continence; like Aurelianus and Ferreolus who compiled the +ecclesiastical canons; historians like Rotherius, famous for a lost +history of the Huns. + +Des Esseintes' library did not contain many works of the centuries +immediately succeeding. Notwithstanding this deficiency, the sixth +century was represented by Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, whose hymns +and _Vexila regis_, carved out of the old carrion of the Latin +language and spiced with the aromatics of the Church, haunted him on +certain days; by Boethius, Gregory of Tours, and Jornandez. In the +seventh and eighth centuries since, in addition to the low Latin of +the Chroniclers, the Fredegaires and Paul Diacres, and the poems +contained in the Bangor antiphonary which he sometimes read for the +alphabetical and mono-rhymed hymn sung in honor of Saint Comgill, the +literature limited itself almost exclusively to biographies of saints, +to the legend of Saint Columban, written by the monk, Jonas, and to +that of the blessed Cuthbert, written by the Venerable Bede from the +notes of an anonymous monk of Lindisfarn, he contented himself with +glancing over, in his moments of tedium, the works of these +hagiographers and in again reading several extracts from the lives of +Saint Rusticula and Saint Radegonda, related, the one by Defensorius, +the other by the modest and ingenious Baudonivia, a nun of Poitiers. + +But the singular works of Latin and Anglo-Saxon literature allured him +still further. They included the whole series of riddles by Adhelme, +Tatwine and Eusebius, who were descendants of Symphosius, and +especially the enigmas composed by Saint Boniface, in acrostic +strophes whose solution could be found in the initial letters of the +verses. + +His interest diminished with the end of those two centuries. Hardly +pleased with the cumbersome mass of Carlovingian Latinists, the +Alcuins and the Eginhards, he contented himself, as a specimen of the +language of the ninth century, with the chronicles of Saint Gall, +Freculfe and Reginon; with the poem of the siege of Paris written by +Abbo le Courbe; with the didactic _Hortulus_, of the Benedictine +Walafrid Strabo, whose chapter consecrated to the glory of the gourd +as a symbol of fruitfulness, enlivened him; with the poem in which +Ermold the Dark, celebrating the exploits of Louis the Debonair, a +poem written in regular hexameters, in an austere, almost forbidding +style and in a Latin of iron dipped in monastic waters with straws of +sentiment, here and there, in the unpliant metal; with the _De viribus +herbarum_, the poem of Macer Floridus, who particularly delighted him +because of his poetic recipes and the very strange virtues which he +ascribes to certain plants and flowers; to the aristolochia, for +example, which, mixed with the flesh of a cow and placed on the lower +part of a pregnant woman's abdomen, insures the birth of a male child; +or to the borage which, when brewed into an infusion in a dining room, +diverts guests; or to the peony whose powdered roots cure epilepsy; or +to the fennel which, if placed on a woman's breasts, clears her water +and stimulates the indolence of her periods. + +Apart from several special, unclassified volumes, modern or dateless, +certain works on the Cabbala, medicine and botany, certain odd tomes +containing undiscoverable Christian poetry, and the anthology of the +minor Latin poets of Wernsdorf; apart from _Meursius_, the manual of +classical erotology of Forberg, and the diaconals used by confessors, +which he dusted at rare intervals, his Latin library ended at the +beginning of the tenth century. + +And, in fact, the curiosity, the complicated naivete of the Christian +language had also foundered. The balderdash of philosophers and +scholars, the logomachy of the Middle Ages, thenceforth held absolute +sway. The sooty mass of chronicles and historical books and +cartularies accumulated, and the stammering grace, the often exquisite +awkwardness of the monks, placing the poetic remains of antiquity in a +ragout, were dead. The fabrications of verbs and purified essences, of +substantives breathing of incense, of bizarre adjectives, coarsely +carved from gold, with the barbarous and charming taste of Gothic +jewels, were destroyed. The old editions, beloved by Des Esseintes, +here ended; and with a formidable leap of centuries, the books on his +shelves went straight to the French language of the present century. + + + + + Chapter 5 + + +The afternoon was drawing to its close when a carriage halted in front +of the Fontenay house. Since Des Esseintes received no visitors, and +since the postman never even ventured into these uninhabited parts, +having no occasion to deliver any papers, magazines or letters, the +servants hesitated before opening the door. Then, as the bell was rung +furiously again, they peered through the peep-hole cut into the wall, +and perceived a man, concealed, from neck to waist, behind an immense +gold buckler. + +They informed their master, who was breakfasting. + +"Ask him in," he said, for he recalled having given his address to a +lapidary for the delivery of a purchase. + +The man bowed and deposited the buckler on the pinewood floor of the +dining room. It oscillated and wavered, revealing the serpentine head +of a tortoise which, suddenly terrified, retreated into its shell. + +This tortoise was a fancy which had seized Des Esseintes some time +before his departure from Paris. Examining an Oriental rug, one day, +in reflected light, and following the silver gleams which fell on its +web of plum violet and alladin yellow, it suddenly occurred to him how +much it would be improved if he could place on it some object whose +deep color might enhance the vividness of its tints. + +Possessed by this idea, he had been strolling aimlessly along the +streets, when suddenly he found himself gazing at the very object of +his wishes. There, in a shop window on the Palais Royal, lay a huge +tortoise in a large basin. He had purchased it. Then he had sat a long +time, with eyes half-shut, studying the effect. + +Decidedly, the Ethiopic black, the harsh Sienna tone of this shell +dulled the rug's reflections without adding to it. The dominant silver +gleams in it barely sparkled, crawling with lack-lustre tones of dead +zinc against the edges of the hard, tarnished shell. + +He bit his nails while he studied a method of removing these discords +and reconciling the determined opposition of the tones. He finally +discovered that his first inspiration, which was to animate the fire +of the weave by setting it off against some dark object, was +erroneous. In fact, this rug was too new, too petulant and gaudy. The +colors were not sufficiently subdued. He must reverse the process, +dull the tones, and extinguish them by the contrast of a striking +object, which would eclipse all else and cast a golden light on the +pale silver. Thus stated, the problem was easier to solve. He +therefore decided to glaze the shell of the tortoise with gold. + +The tortoise, just returned by the lapidary, shone brilliantly, +softening the tones of the rug and casting on it a gorgeous reflection +which resembled the irradiations from the scales of a barbaric +Visigoth shield. + +At first Des Esseintes was enchanted with this effect. Then he +reflected that this gigantic jewel was only in outline, that it would +not really be complete until it had been incrusted with rare stones. + +From a Japanese collection he chose a design representing a cluster of +flowers emanating spindle-like, from a slender stalk. Taking it to a +jeweler, he sketched a border to enclose this bouquet in an oval +frame, and informed the amazed lapidary that every petal and every +leaf was to be designed with jewels and mounted on the scales of the +tortoise. + +The choice of stones made him pause. The diamond has become +notoriously common since every tradesman has taken to wearing it on +his little finger. The oriental emeralds and rubies are less +vulgarized and cast brilliant, rutilant flames, but they remind one of +the green and red antennae of certain omnibuses which carry signal +lights of these colors. As for topazes, whether sparkling or dim, they +are cheap stones, precious only to women of the middle class who like +to have jewel cases on their dressing-tables. And then, although the +Church has preserved for the amethyst a sacerdotal character which is +at once unctuous and solemn, this stone, too, is abused on the +blood-red ears and veined hands of butchers' wives who love to adorn +themselves inexpensively with real and heavy jewels. Only the +sapphire, among all these stones, has kept its fires undefiled by any +taint of commercialism. Its sparks, crackling in its limpid, cold +depths have in some way protected its shy and proud nobility from +pollution. Unfortunately, its fresh fire does not sparkle in +artificial light: the blue retreats and seems to fall asleep, only +awakening to shine at daybreak. + +None of these satisfied Des Esseintes at all. They were too civilized +and familiar. He let trickle through his fingers still more +astonishing and bizarre stones, and finally selected a number of real +and artificial ones which, used together, should produce a fascinating +and disconcerting harmony. + +This is how he composed his bouquet of flowers: the leaves were set +with jewels of a pronounced, distinct green; the chrysoberyls of +asparagus green; the chrysolites of leek green; the olivines of olive +green. They hung from branches of almandine and _ouwarovite_ of a +violet red, darting spangles of a hard brilliance like tartar micas +gleaming through forest depths. + +For the flowers, separated from the stalk and removed from the bottom +of the sheaf, he used blue cinder. But he formally waived that +oriental turquoise used for brooches and rings which, like the banal +pearl and the odious coral, serves to delight people of no importance. +He chose occidental turquoises exclusively, stones which, properly +speaking, are only a fossil ivory impregnated with coppery substances +whose sea blue is choked, opaque, sulphurous, as though yellowed by +bile. + +This done, he could now set the petals of his flowers with transparent +stones which had morbid and vitreous sparks, feverish and sharp +lights. + +He composed them entirely with Ceylon snap-dragons, cymophanes and +blue chalcedony. + +These three stones darted mysterious and perverse scintillations, +painfully torn from the frozen depths of their troubled waters. + +The snap-dragon of a greenish grey, streaked with concentric veins +which seem to stir and change constantly, according to the +dispositions of light. + +The cymophane, whose azure waves float over the milky tint swimming in +its depths. + +The blue chalcedony which kindles with bluish phosphorescent fires +against a dead brown, chocolate background. + +The lapidary made a note of the places where the stones were to be +inlaid. "And the border of the shell?" he asked Des Esseintes. + +At first he had thought of some opals and hydrophanes; but these +stones, interesting for their hesitating colors, for the evasions of +their flames, are too refractory and faithless; the opal has a quite +rheumatic sensitiveness; the play of its rays alters according to the +humidity, the warmth or cold; as for the hydrophane, it only burns in +water and only consents to kindle its embers when moistened. + +He finally decided on minerals whose reflections vary; for the +Compostelle hyacinth, mahogany red; the beryl, glaucous green; the +balas ruby, vinegar rose; the Sudermanian ruby, pale slate. Their +feeble sparklings sufficed to light the darkness of the shell and +preserved the values of the flowering stones which they encircled with +a slender garland of vague fires. + +Des Esseintes now watched the tortoise squatting in a corner of the +dining room, shining in the shadow. + +He was perfectly happy. His eyes gleamed with pleasure at the +resplendencies of the flaming corrollae against the gold background. +Then, he grew hungry--a thing that rarely if ever happened to him--and +dipped his toast, spread with a special butter, in a cup of tea, a +flawless blend of Siafayoune, Moyoutann and Khansky--yellow teas which +had come from China to Russia by special caravans. + +This liquid perfume he drank in those Chinese porcelains called +egg-shell, so light and diaphanous they are. And, as an accompaniment +to these adorable cups, he used a service of solid silver, slightly +gilded; the silver showed faintly under the fatigued layer of gold, +which gave it an aged, quite exhausted and moribund tint. + +After he had finished his tea, he returned to his study and had the +servant carry in the tortoise which stubbornly refused to budge. + +The snow was falling. By the lamp light, he saw the icy patterns on +the bluish windows, and the hoar-frost, like melted sugar, +scintillating in the stumps of bottles spotted with gold. + +A deep silence enveloped the cottage drooping in shadow. + +Des Esseintes fell into revery. The fireplace piled with logs gave +forth a smell of burning wood. He opened the window slightly. + +Like a high tapestry of black ermine, the sky rose before him, black +flecked with white. + +An icy wind swept past, accelerated the crazy flight of the snow, and +reversed the color order. + +The heraldic tapestry of heaven returned, became a true ermine, a +white flecked with black, in its turn, by the specks of darkness +dispersed among the flakes. + +He closed the window. This abrupt transition from torrid warmth to +cold winter affected him. He crouched near the fire and it occurred to +him that he needed a cordial to revive his flagging spirits. + +He went to the dining room where, built in one of the panels, was a +closet containing a number of tiny casks, ranged side by side, and +resting on small stands of sandal wood. + +This collection of barrels he called his mouth organ. + +A stem could connect all the spigots and control them by a single +movement, so that once attached, he had only to press a button +concealed in the woodwork to turn on all the taps at the same time and +fill the mugs placed underneath. + +The organ was now open. The stops labelled flute, horn, celestial +voice, were pulled out, ready to be placed. Des Esseintes sipped here +and there, enjoying the inner symphonies, succeeded in procuring +sensations in his throat analogous to those which music gives to the +ear. + +Moreover, each liquor corresponded, according to his thinking, to the +sound of some instrument. Dry curacoa, for example, to the clarinet +whose tone is sourish and velvety; _kummel_ to the oboe whose sonorous +notes snuffle; mint and anisette to the flute, at once sugary and +peppery, puling and sweet; while, to complete the orchestra, +_kirschwasser_ has the furious ring of the trumpet; gin and whiskey +burn the palate with their strident crashings of trombones and +cornets; brandy storms with the deafening hubbub of tubas; while the +thunder-claps of the cymbals and the furiously beaten drum roll in the +mouth by means of the _rakis de Chio_. + +He also thought that the comparison could be continued, that quartets +of string instruments could play under the palate, with the violin +simulated by old brandy, fumous and fine, piercing and frail; the +tenor violin by rum, louder and more sonorous; the cello by the +lacerating and lingering ratafia, melancholy and caressing; with the +double-bass, full-bodied, solid and dark as the old bitters. If one +wished to form a quintet, one could even add a fifth instrument with +the vibrant taste, the silvery detached and shrill note of dry cumin +imitating the harp. + +The comparison was further prolonged. Tone relationships existed in +the music of liquors; to cite but one note, benedictine represents, so +to speak, the minor key of that major key of alcohols which are +designated in commercial scores, under the name of green Chartreuse. + +These principles once admitted, he succeeded, after numerous +experiments, in enjoying silent melodies on his tongue, mute funeral +marches, in hearing, in his mouth, solos of mint, duos of ratafia and +rum. + +He was even able to transfer to his palate real pieces of music, +following the composer step by step, rendering his thought, his +effects, his nuances, by combinations or contrasts of liquors, by +approximative and skilled mixtures. + +At other times, he himself composed melodies, executed pastorals with +mild black-currant which evoked, in his throat, the trillings of +nightingales; with the tender chouva cocoa which sang saccharine songs +like "The romance of Estelle" and the "Ah! Shall I tell you, mama," of +past days. + +But on this evening Des Esseintes was not inclined to listen to this +music. He confined himself to sounding one note on the keyboard of his +organ, by swallowing a little glass of genuine Irish whiskey. + +He sank into his easy chair and slowly inhaled this fermented juice of +oats and barley: a pronounced taste of creosote was in his mouth. + +Gradually, as he drank, his thought followed the now revived +sensitiveness of his palate, fitted its progress to the flavor of the +whiskey, re-awakened, by a fatal exactitude of odors, memories effaced +for years. + +This carbolic tartness forcibly recalled to him the same taste he had +had on his tongue in the days when dentists worked on his gums. + +Once abandoned on this track, his revery, at first dispersed among all +the dentists he had known, concentrated and converged on one of them +who was more firmly engraved in his memory. + +It had happened three years ago. Seized, in the middle of the night, +with an abominable toothache, he put his hand to his cheek, stumbled +against the furniture, pacing up and down the room like a demented +person. + +It was a molar which had already been filled; no remedy was possible. +Only a dentist could alleviate the pain. He feverishly waited for the +day, resolved to bear the most atrocious operation provided it would +only ease his sufferings. + +Holding a hand to his jaw, he asked himself what should be done. The +dentists who treated him were rich merchants whom one could not see at +any time; one had to make an appointment. He told himself that this +would never do, that he could not endure it. He decided to patronize +the first one he could find, to hasten to a popular tooth-extractor, +one of those iron-fisted men who, if they are ignorant of the useless +art of dressing decaying teeth and of filling holes, know how to pull +the stubbornest stump with an unequalled rapidity. There, the office +is opened early in the morning and one is not required to wait. Seven +o'clock struck at last. He hurried out, and recollecting the name of a +mechanic who called himself a dentist and dwelt in the corner of a +quay, he rushed through the streets, holding his cheek with his hands +repressing the tears. + +Arrived in front of the house, recognizable by an immense wooden +signboard where the name of "Gatonax" sprawled in enormous +pumpkin-colored letters, and by two little glass cases where false +teeth were carefully set in rose-colored wax, he gasped for breath. He +perspired profusely. A horrible fear shook him, a trembling crept +under his skin; suddenly a calm ensued, the suffering ceased, the +tooth stopped paining. + +He remained, stupefied, on the sidewalk; finally, he stiffened against +the anguish, mounted the dim stairway, running up four steps at a time +to the fourth story. He found himself in front of a door where an +enamel plate repeated, inscribed in sky-blue lettering, the name on +the signboard. He rang the bell and then, terrified by the great red +spittles which he noticed on the steps, he faced about, resolved to +endure his toothache all his life. At that moment an excruciating cry +pierced the partitions, filled the cage of the doorway and glued him +to the spot with horror, at the same time that a door was opened and +an old woman invited him to enter. + +His feeling of shame quickly changed to fear. He was ushered into a +dining room. Another door creaked and in entered a terrible grenadier +dressed in a frock-coat and black trousers. Des Esseintes followed him +to another room. + +From this instant, his sensations were confused. He vaguely remembered +having sunk into a chair opposite a window, having murmured, as he put +a finger to his tooth: "It has already been filled and I am afraid +nothing more can be done with it." + +The man immediately suppressed these explanations by introducing an +enormous index finger into his mouth. Muttering beneath his waxed +fang-like moustaches, he took an instrument from the table. + +Then the play began. Clinging to the arms of his seat, Des Esseintes +felt a cold sensation in his cheek, and began to suffer unheard +agonies. Then he beheld stars. He stamped his feet frantically and +bleated like a sheep about to be slaughtered. + +A snapping sound was heard, the molar had broken while being +extracted. It seemed that his head was being shattered, that his skull +was being smashed; he lost his senses, howled as loudly as he could, +furiously defending himself from the man who rushed at him anew as if +he wished to implant his whole arm in the depths of his bowels, +brusquely recoiled a step and, lifting the tooth attached to the jaw, +brutally let him fall back into the chair. Breathing heavily, his form +filling the window, he brandished at one end of his forceps, a blue +tooth with blood at one end. + +Faint and prostrate, Des Esseintes spat blood into a basin, refused +with a gesture, the tooth which the old woman was about to wrap in a +piece of paper and fled, after paying two francs. Expectorating blood, +in his turn, down the steps, he at length found himself in the street, +joyous, feeling ten years younger, interested in every little +occurrence. + +"Phew!" he exclaimed, saddened by the assault of these memories. He +rose to dissipate the horrible spell of this vision and, returning to +reality, began to be concerned with the tortoise. + +It did not budge at all and he tapped it. The animal was dead. +Doubtless accustomed to a sedentary existence, to a humble life spent +underneath its poor shell, it had been unable to support the dazzling +luxury imposed on it, the rutilant cope with which it had been +covered, the jewels with which its back had been paved, like a pyx. + + + + + Chapter 6 + + +With the sharpening of his desire to withdraw from a hated age, he +felt a despotic urge to shun pictures representing humanity striving +in little holes or running to and fro in quest of money. + +With his growing indifference to contemporary life he had resolved not +to introduce into his cell any of the ghosts of distastes or regrets, +but had desired to procure subtle and exquisite paintings, steeped in +ancient dreams or antique corruptions, far removed from the manner of +our present day. + +For the delight of his spirit and the joy of his eyes, he had desired +a few suggestive creations that cast him into an unknown world, +revealing to him the contours of new conjectures, agitating the +nervous system by the violent deliriums, complicated nightmares, +nonchalant or atrocious chimerae they induced. + +Among these were some executed by an artist whose genius allured and +entranced him: Gustave Moreau. + +Des Esseintes had acquired his two masterpieces and, at night, used to +sink into revery before one of them--a representation of Salome, +conceived in this fashion: + +A throne, resembling the high altar of a cathedral, reared itself +beneath innumerable vaults leaping from heavy Romanesque pillars, +studded with polychromatic bricks, set with mosaics, incrusted with +lapis lazuli and sardonyx, in a palace that, like a basilica, was at +once Mohammedan and Byzantine in design. + +In the center of the tabernacle, surmounting an altar approached by +semi-circular steps, sat Herod the Tetrarch, a tiara upon his head, +his legs pressed closely together, his hands resting upon his knees. + +His face was the color of yellow parchment; it was furrowed with +wrinkles, ravaged with age. His long beard floated like a white cloud +upon the star-like clusters of jewels constellating the orphrey robe +fitting tightly over his breast. + +Around this form, frozen into the immobile, sacerdotal, hieratic pose +of a Hindoo god, burned perfumes wafting aloft clouds of incense which +were perforated, like phosphorescent eyes of beasts, by the fiery rays +of the stones set in the throne. Then the vapor rolled up, diffusing +itself beneath arcades where the blue smoke mingled with the gold +powder of the long sunbeams falling from the domes. + +In the perverse odor of the perfumes, in the overheated atmosphere of +the temple, Salome, her left arm outstretched in a gesture of command, +her right arm drawn back and holding a large lotus on a level with her +face, slowly advances on her toes, to the rhythm of a stringed +instrument played by a woman seated on the ground. + +Her face is meditative, solemn, almost august, as she commences the +lascivious dance that will awaken the slumbering senses of old Herod. +Diamonds scintillate against her glistening skin. Her bracelets, her +girdles, her rings flash. On her triumphal robe, seamed with pearls, +flowered with silver and laminated with gold, the breastplate of +jewels, each link of which is a precious stone, flashes serpents of +fire against the pallid flesh, delicate as a tea-rose: its jewels like +splendid insects with dazzling elytra, veined with carmine, dotted +with yellow gold, diapered with blue steel, speckled with peacock +green. + +With a tense concentration, with the fixed gaze of a somnambulist, she +beholds neither the trembling Tetrarch, nor her mother, the fierce +Herodias who watches her, nor the hermaphrodite, nor the eunuch who +sits, sword in hand, at the foot of the throne--a terrible figure, +veiled to his eyes, whose breasts droop like gourds under his +orange-checkered tunic. + +This conception of Salome, so haunting to artists and poets, had +obsessed Des Esseintes for years. How often had he read in the old +Bible of Pierre Variquet, translated by the theological doctors of the +University of Louvain, the Gospel of Saint Matthew who, in brief and +ingenuous phrases, recounts the beheading of the Baptist! How often +had he fallen into revery, as he read these lines: + + But when Herod's birthday was kept, the + daughter of Herodias danced before them, and + pleased Herod. + + Whereupon he promised with an oath to give + her whatsoever she would ask. + + And she, being before instructed of her + mother, said: Give me here John Baptist's + head in a charger. + + And the king was sorry: nevertheless, for + the oath's sake, and them which sat with him + at meat, he commanded it to be given her. + + And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. + + And his head was brought in a charger, and + given to the damsel: and she brought it to + her mother. + +But neither Saint Matthew, nor Saint Mark, nor Saint Luke, nor the +other Evangelists had emphasized the maddening charms and depravities +of the dancer. She remained vague and hidden, mysterious and swooning +in the far-off mist of the centuries, not to be grasped by vulgar and +materialistic minds, accessible only to disordered and volcanic +intellects made visionaries by their neuroticism; rebellious to +painters of the flesh, to Rubens who disguised her as a butcher's wife +of Flanders; a mystery to all the writers who had never succeeded in +portraying the disquieting exaltation of this dancer, the refined +grandeur of this murderess. + +In Gustave Moreau's work, conceived independently of the Testament +themes, Des Esseintes as last saw realized the superhuman and exotic +Salome of his dreams. She was no longer the mere performer who wrests +a cry of desire and of passion from an old man by a perverted twisting +of her loins; who destroys the energy and breaks the will of a king by +trembling breasts and quivering belly. She became, in a sense, the +symbolic deity of indestructible lust, the goddess of immortal +Hysteria, of accursed Beauty, distinguished from all others by the +catalepsy which stiffens her flesh and hardens her muscles; the +monstrous Beast, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, baneful, like +the Helen of antiquity, fatal to all who approach her, all who behold +her, all whom she touches. + +Thus understood, she was associated with the theogonies of the Far +East. She no longer sprang from biblical traditions, could no longer +even be assimilated with the living image of Babylon, the royal +Prostitute of the Apocalypse, garbed like her in jewels and purple, +and painted like her; for she was not hurled by a fatidical power, by +a supreme force, into the alluring vileness of debauchery. + +The painter, moreover, seems to have wished to affirm his desire of +remaining outside the centuries, scorning to designate the origin, +nation and epoch, by placing his Salome in this extraordinary palace +with its confused and imposing style, in clothing her with sumptuous +and chimerical robes, in crowning her with a fantastic mitre shaped +like a Phoenician tower, such as Salammbo bore, and placing in her +hand the sceptre of Isis, the tall lotus, sacred flower of Egypt and +India. + +Des Esseintes sought the sense of this emblem. Had it that phallic +significance which the primitive cults of India gave it? Did it +enunciate an oblation of virginity to the senile Herod, an exchange of +blood, an impure and voluntary wound, offered under the express +stipulation of a monstrous sin? Or did it represent the allegory of +fecundity, the Hindoo myth of life, an existence held between the +hands of woman, distorted and trampled by the palpitant hands of man +whom a fit of madness seizes, seduced by a convulsion of the flesh? + +Perhaps, too, in arming his enigmatic goddess with the venerated +lotus, the painter had dreamed of the dancer, the mortal woman with +the polluted Vase, from whom spring all sins and crimes. Perhaps he +had recalled the rites of ancient Egypt, the sepulchral ceremonies of +the embalming when, after stretching the corpse on a bench of jasper, +extracting the brain with curved needles through the chambers of the +nose, the chemists and the priests, before gilding the nails and teeth +and coating the body with bitumens and essences, inserted the chaste +petals of the divine flower in the sexual parts, to purify them. + +However this may be, an irresistible fascination emanated from this +painting; but the water-color entitled _The Apparition_ was perhaps +even more disturbing. + +There, the palace of Herod arose like an Alhambra on slender, +iridescent columns with moorish tile, joined with silver beton and +gold cement. Arabesques proceeded from lozenges of lapis lazuli, wove +their patterns on the cupolas where, on nacreous marquetry, crept +rainbow gleams and prismatic flames. + +The murder was accomplished. The executioner stood impassive, his +hands on the hilt of his long, blood-stained sword. + +The severed head of the saint stared lividly on the charger resting on +the slabs; the mouth was discolored and open, the neck crimson, and +tears fell from the eyes. The face was encircled by an aureole worked +in mosaic, which shot rays of light under the porticos and illuminated +the horrible ascension of the head, brightening the glassy orbs of the +contracted eyes which were fixed with a ghastly stare upon the dancer. + +With a gesture of terror, Salome thrusts from her the horrible vision +which transfixes her, motionless, to the ground. Her eyes dilate, her +hands clasp her neck in a convulsive clutch. + +She is almost nude. In the ardor of the dance, her veils had become +loosened. She is garbed only in gold-wrought stuffs and limpid stones; +a neck-piece clasps her as a corselet does the body and, like a superb +buckle, a marvelous jewel sparkles on the hollow between her breasts. +A girdle encircles her hips, concealing the upper part of her thighs, +against which beats a gigantic pendant streaming with carbuncles and +emeralds. + +All the facets of the jewels kindle under the ardent shafts of light +escaping from the head of the Baptist. The stones grow warm, outlining +the woman's body with incandescent rays, striking her neck, feet and +arms with tongues of fire,--vermilions like coals, violets like jets +of gas, blues like flames of alcohol, and whites like star light. + +The horrible head blazes, bleeding constantly, clots of sombre purple +on the ends of the beard and hair. Visible for Salome alone, it does +not, with its fixed gaze, attract Herodias, musing on her finally +consummated revenge, nor the Tetrarch who, bent slightly forward, his +hands on his knees, still pants, maddened by the nudity of the woman +saturated with animal odors, steeped in balms, exuding incense and +myrrh. + +Like the old king, Des Esseintes remained dumbfounded, overwhelmed and +seized with giddiness, in the presence of this dancer who was less +majestic, less haughty but more disquieting than the Salome of the oil +painting. + +In this insensate and pitiless image, in this innocent and dangerous +idol, the eroticism and terror of mankind were depicted. The tall +lotus had disappeared, the goddess had vanished; a frightful nightmare +now stifled the woman, dizzied by the whirlwind of the dance, +hypnotized and petrified by terror. + +It was here that she was indeed Woman, for here she gave rein to her +ardent and cruel temperament. She was living, more refined and savage, +more execrable and exquisite. She more energetically awakened the +dulled senses of man, more surely bewitched and subdued his power of +will, with the charm of a tall venereal flower, cultivated in +sacrilegious beds, in impious hothouses. + +Des Esseintes thought that never before had a water color attained +such magnificent coloring; never before had the poverty of colors been +able to force jeweled corruscations from paper, gleams like stained +glass windows touched by rays of sunlight, splendors of tissue and +flesh so fabulous and dazzling. Lost in contemplation, he sought to +discover the origins of this great artist and mystic pagan, this +visionary who succeeded in removing himself from the world +sufficiently to behold, here in Paris, the splendor of these cruel +visions and the enchanting sublimation of past ages. + +Des Esseintes could not trace the genesis of this artist. Here and +there were vague suggestions of Mantegna and of Jacopo de Barbari; +here and there were confused hints of Vinci and of the feverish colors +of Delacroix. But the influences of such masters remained negligible. +The fact was that Gustave Moreau derived from no one else. He remained +unique in contemporary art, without ancestors and without possible +descendants. He went to ethnographic sources, to the origins of myths, +and he compared and elucidated their intricate enigmas. He reunited +the legends of the Far East into a whole, the myths which had been +altered by the superstitions of other peoples; thus justifying his +architectonic fusions, his luxurious and outlandish fabrics, his +hieratic and sinister allegories sharpened by the restless perceptions +of a pruriently modern neurosis. And he remained saddened, haunted by +the symbols of perversities and superhuman loves, of divine +stuprations brought to end without abandonment and without hope. + +His depressing and erudite productions possessed a strange +enchantment, an incantation that stirred one to the depths, just as do +certain poems of Baudelaire, caused one to pause disconcerted, amazed, +brooding on the spell of an art which leaped beyond the confines of +painting, borrowing its most subtle effects from the art of writing, +its most marvelous stokes from the art of Limosin, its most exquisite +refinements from the art of the lapidary and the engraver. These two +pictures of Salome, for which Des Esseintes' admiration was boundless, +he had hung on the walls of his study on special panels between the +bookshelves, so that they might live under his eyes. + +But these were not the only pictures he had acquired to divert his +solitude. + +Although he had surrendered to his servants the second story of his +house, which he himself never used at all, the ground floor had +required a number of pictures to fit the walls. + +It was thus arranged: + +A dressing room, communicating with the bedroom, occupied one of the +corners of the house. One passed from the bedroom to the library, and +from the library into the dining room, which formed the other corner. + +These rooms, whose windows looked out on the Aunay Valley, composed +one of the sides of the dwelling. + +The other side of the house had four rooms arranged in the same order. +Thus, the kitchen formed an angle, and corresponded with the dining +room; a long corridor, which served as the entrance, with the library; +a small dressing room, with the bedroom; and the toilet, forming a +second angle, with the dressing room. + +These rooms received the light from the side opposite the Aunay Valley +and faced the Towers of Croy and Chatillon. + +As for the staircase, it was built outside, against one of the sides +of the house, and the footsteps of his servants in ascending or +descending thus reached Des Esseintes less distinctly. + +The dressing room was tapestried in deep red. On the walls, in ebony +frames, hung the prints of Jan Luyken, an old Dutch engraver almost +unknown in France. + +He possessed of the work of this artist, who was fantastic and +melancholy, vehement and wild, the series of his _Religious +Persecutions_, horrible prints depicting all the agonies invented by +the madness of religions: prints pregnant with human sufferings, +showing bodies roasting on fires, skulls slit open with swords, +trepaned with nails and gashed with saws, intestines separated from +the abdomen and twisted on spools, finger nails slowly extracted with +pincers, eyes gouged, limbs dislocated and deliberately broken, and +bones bared of flesh and agonizingly scraped by sheets of metal. + +These works filled with abominable imaginings, offensive with their +odors of burning, oozing with blood and clamorous with cries of horror +and maledictions, gave Des Esseintes, who was held fascinated in this +red room, the creeping sensations of goose-flesh. + +But in addition to the tremblings they occasioned, beyond the terrible +skill of this man, the extraordinary life which animates his +characters, one discovered, among his astonishing, swarming +throngs--among his mobs of people delineated with a dexterity which +recalled Callot, but which had a strength never possessed by that +amusing dauber--curious reconstructions of bygone ages. The +architecture, costumes and customs during the time of the Maccabeans, +of Rome under the Christian persecutions, of Spain under the +Inquisition, of France during the Middle Ages, at the time of Saint +Bartholomew and the Dragonnades, were studied with a meticulous care +and noted with scientific accuracy. + +These prints were veritable treasures of learning. One could gaze at +them for hours without experiencing any sense of weariness. Profoundly +suggestive in reflections, they assisted Des Esseintes in passing many +a day when his books failed to charm him. + +Luyken's life, too, fascinated him, by explaining the hallucination of +his work. A fervent Calvinist, a stubborn sectarian, unbalanced by +prayers and hymns, he wrote religious poetry which he illustrated, +paraphrased the psalms in verse, lost himself in the reading of the +Bible from which he emerged haggard and frenzied, his brain haunted by +monstrous subjects, his mouth twisted by the maledictions of the +Reformation and by its songs of terror and hate. + +And he scorned the world, surrendering his wealth to the poor and +subsisting on a slice of bread. He ended his life in travelling, with +an equally fanatical servant, going where chance led his boat, +preaching the Gospel far and wide, endeavoring to forego nourishment, +and eventually becoming almost demented and violent. + +Other bizarre sketches were hung in the larger, adjoining room, as +well as in the corridor, both of which had woodwork of red cedar. + +There was Bresdin's _Comedy of Death_ in which, in the fantastic +landscape bristling with trees, brushwood and tufts of grass +resembling phantom, demon forms, teeming with rat-headed, pod-tailed +birds, on earth covered with ribs, skulls and bones, gnarled and +cracked willows rear their trunks, surmounted by agitated skeletons +whose arms beat the air while they intone a song of victory. A Christ +speeds across a clouded sky; a hermit in the depths of a cave +meditates, holding his head in his hands; one wretch dies, exhausted +by long privation and enfeebled by hunger, lying on his back, his legs +outstretched in front of a pond. + +The _Good Samaritan_, by the same artist, is a large engraving on +stone: an incongruous medley of palms, sorbs and oaks grown together, +heedless of seasons and climates, peopled with monkeys and owls, +covered with old stumps as misshapen as the roots of the mandrake; +then a magical forest, cut in the center near a glade through which a +stream can be seen far away, behind a camel and the Samaritan group; +then an elfin town appearing on the horizon of an exotic sky dotted +with birds and covered with masses of fleecy clouds. + +It could be called the design of an uncertain, primitive Durer with an +opium-steeped brain. But although he liked the finesse of the detail +and the imposing appearance of this print, Des Esseintes had a special +weakness for the other frames adorning the room. + +They were signed: Odilon Redon. + +They enclosed inconceivable apparitions in their rough, gold-striped +pear-tree wood. A head of a Merovingian style, resting against a bowl, +a bearded man, at once resembling a Buddhist priest and an orator at a +public reunion, touching the ball of a gigantic cannon with his +fingers; a frightful spider revealing a human face in its body. The +charcoal drawings went even farther into dream terrors. Here, an +enormous die in which a sad eye winked; there, dry and arid +landscapes, dusty plains, shifting ground, volcanic upheavals catching +rebellious clouds, stagnant and livid skies. Sometimes the subjects +even seemed to have borrowed from the cacodemons of science, reverting +to prehistoric times. A monstrous plant on the rocks, queer blocks +everywhere, glacial mud, figures whose simian shapes, heavy jaws, +beetling eyebrows, retreating foreheads and flat skulls, recalled the +ancestral heads of the first quaternary periods, when inarticulate man +still devoured fruits and seeds, and was still contemporaneous with +the mammoth, the rhinoceros and the big bear. These designs were +beyond anything imaginable; they leaped, for the most part, beyond the +limits of painting and introduced a fantasy that was unique, the +fantasy of a diseased and delirious mind. + +And, indeed, certain of these faces, with their monstrous, insane +eyes, certain of these swollen, deformed bodies resembling carafes, +induced in Des Esseintes recollections of typhoid, memories of +feverish nights and of the shocking visions of his infancy which +persisted and would not be suppressed. + +Seized with an indefinable uneasiness in the presence of these +sketches, the same sensation caused by certain _Proverbs_ of Goya +which they recalled, or by the reading of Edgar Allen Poe's tales, +whose mirages of hallucination and effects of fear Odilon Redon seemed +to have transposed to a different art, he rubbed his eyes and turned +to contemplate a radiant figure which, amid these tormenting sketches, +arose serene and calm--a figure of Melancholy seated near the disk of +a sun, on the rocks, in a dejected and gloomy posture. + +The shadows were dispersed as though by an enchantment. A charming +sadness, a languid and desolate feeling flowed through him. He +meditated long before this work which, with its dashes of paint +flecking the thick crayon, spread a brilliance of sea-green and of +pale gold among the protracted darkness of the charcoal prints. + +In addition to this series of the works of Redon which adorned nearly +every panel of the passage, he had hung a disturbing sketch by El +Greco in his bedroom. It was a Christ done in strange tints, in a +strained design, possessing a wild color and a disordered energy: a +picture executed in the painter's second manner when he had been +tormented by the necessity of avoiding imitation of Titian. + +This sinister painting, with its wax and sickly green tones, bore an +affinity to certain ideas Des Esseintes had with regard to furnishing +a room. + +According to him, there were but two ways of fitting a bedroom. One +could either make it a sense-stimulating alcove, a place for nocturnal +delights, or a cell for solitude and repose, a retreat for thought, a +sort of oratory. + +For the first instance, the Louis XV style was inevitable for the +fastidious, for the cerebrally morbid. Only the eighteenth century had +succeeded in enveloping woman with a vicious atmosphere, imitating her +contours in the undulations and twistings of wood and copper, +accentuating the sugary languor of the blond with its clear and lively +_decors_, attenuating the pungency of the brunette with its tapestries +of aqueous, sweet, almost insipid tones. + +He had once had such a room in Paris, with a lofty, white, lacquered +bed which is one stimulant the more, a source of depravity to old +roues, leering at the false chastity and hypocritical modesty of +Greuze's tender virgins, at the deceptive candor of a bed evocative of +babes and chaste maidens. + +For the second instance,--and now that he wished to put behind him the +irritating memories of his past life, this was the only possible +expedient--he was compelled to design a room that would be like a +monastic cell. But difficulties faced him here, for he refused to +accept in its entirety the austere ugliness of those asylums of +penitence and prayer. + +By dint of studying the problem in all its phases, he concluded that +the end to be attained could thus be stated: to devise a sombre effect +by means of cheerful objects, or rather to give a tone of elegance and +distinction to the room thus treated, meanwhile preserving its +character of ugliness; to reverse the practice of the theatre, whose +vile tinsel imitates sumptuous and costly textures; to obtain the +contrary effect by use of splendid fabrics; in a word, to have the +cell of a Carthusian monk which should possess the appearance of +reality without in fact being so. + +Thus he proceeded. To imitate the stone-color of ochre and clerical +yellow, he had his walls covered with saffron silk; to stimulate the +chocolate hue of the dadoes common to this type of room, he used +pieces of violet wood deepened with amarinth. The effect was +bewitching, while recalling to Des Esseintes the repellant rigidity of +the model he had followed and yet transformed. The ceiling, in turn, +was hung with white, unbleached cloth, in imitation of plaster, but +without its discordant brightness. As for the cold pavement of the +cell, he was able to copy it, by means of a bit of rug designed in red +squares, with whitish spots in the weave to imitate the wear of +sandals and the friction of boots. + +Into this chamber he introduced a small iron bed, the kind used by +monks, fashioned of antique, forged and polished iron, the head and +foot adorned with thick filigrees of blossoming tulips enlaced with +vine branches and leaves. Once this had been part of a balustrade of +an old hostel's superb staircase. + +For his table, he installed an antique praying-desk the inside of +which could contain an urn and the outside a prayer book. Against the +wall, opposite it, he placed a church pew surmounted by a tall dais +with little benches carved out of solid wood. His church tapers were +made of real wax, procured from a special house which catered +exclusively to houses of worship, for Des Esseintes professed a +sincere repugnance to gas, oil and ordinary candles, to all modern +forms of illumination, so gaudy and brutal. + +Before going to sleep in the morning, he would gaze, with his head on +the pillows, at his El Greco whose barbaric color rebuked the smiling, +yellow material and recalled it to a more serious tone. Then he could +easily imagine himself living a hundred leagues removed from Paris, +far from society, in cloistral security. + +And, all in all, the illusion was not difficult, since he led an +existence that approached the life of a monk. Thus he had the +advantages of monasticism without the inconveniences of its vigorous +discipline, its lack of service, its dirt, its promiscuity and its +monotonous idleness. Just as he had transformed his cell into a +comfortable chamber, so had he made his life normal, pleasant, +surrounded by comforts, occupied and free. + +Like a hermit he was ripe for isolation, since life harassed him and +he no longer desired anything of it. Again like a monk, he was +depressed and in the grip of an obsessing lassitude, seized with the +need of self-communion and with a desire to have nothing in common +with the profane who were, for him, the utilitarian and the imbecile. + +Although he experienced no inclination for the state of grace, he felt +a genuine sympathy for those souls immured in monasteries, persecuted +by a vengeful society which can forgive neither the merited scorn with +which it inspires them, nor the desire to expiate, to atone by long +silences, for the ever growing shamelessness of its ridiculous or +trifling gossipings. + + + + + Chapter 7 + + +Ever since the night when he had evoked, for no apparent reason, a +whole train of melancholy memories, pictures of his past life returned +to Des Esseintes and gave him no peace. + +He found himself unable to understand a single word of the books he +read. He could not even receive impressions through his eyes. It +seemed to him that his mind, saturated with literature and art, +refused to absorb any more. + +He lived within himself, nourished by his own substance, like some +torpid creature which hibernates in caves. Solitude had reacted upon +his brain like a narcotic. After having strained and enervated it, his +mind had fallen victim to a sluggishness which annihilated his plans, +broke his will power and invoked a cortege of vague reveries to which +he passively submitted. + +The confused medley of meditations on art and literature in which he +had indulged since his isolation, as a dam to bar the current of old +memories, had been rudely swept away, and the onrushing, irresistible +wave crashed into the present and future, submerging everything +beneath the blanket of the past, filling his mind with an immensity of +sorrow, on whose surface floated, like futile wreckage, absurd trifles +and dull episodes of his life. + +The book he held in his hands fell to his knees. He abandoned himself +to the mood which dominated him, watching the dead years of his life +filled with so many disgusts and fears, move past. What a life he had +lived! He thought of the evenings spent in society, the horse races, +card parties, love affairs ordered in advance and served at the stroke +of midnight, in his rose-colored boudoir! He recalled faces, +expressions, vain words which obsessed him with the stubbornness of +popular melodies which one cannot help humming, but which suddenly and +inexplicably end by boring one. + +This phase had not lasted long. His memory gave him respite and he +plunged again into his Latin studies, so as to efface the impressions +of such recollections. + +But almost instantly the rushing force of his memories swept him into +a second phase, that of his childhood, especially of the years spent +at the school of the Fathers. + +Although more remote, they were more positive and more indelibly +stamped on his brain. The leafy park, the long walks, the flower beds, +the benches--all the actual details of the monastery rose before him, +here in his room. + +The gardens filled and he heard the ringing cries of the students, +mingling with the laughter of the professors as they played tennis, +with their cassocks tucked up between their knees, or perhaps chatted +under the trees with the youngsters, without any posturing or hauteur, +as though they were companions of the same age. + +He recalled the easy yoke of the monks who declined to administer +punishment by inflicting the committment of five hundred or a thousand +lines while the others were at play, being satisfied with making those +delinquents prepare the lesson that had not been mastered, and most +often simply having recourse to a gentle admonition. They surrounded +the children with an active but gentle watch, seeking to please them, +consenting to whatever expeditions they wished to take on Tuesdays, +taking the occasion of every minor holiday not formally observed by +the Church to add cakes and wine to the ordinary fare, and to +entertain them with picnics. It was a paternal discipline whose +success lay in the fact that they did not seek to domineer over the +pupils, that they gossiped with them, treating them as men while +showering them with the attentions paid a spoiled child. + +In this manner, the monks succeeded in assuming a real influence over +the youngsters; in molding, to some extent, the minds which they were +cultivating; in directing them, in a sense; in instilling special +ideas; in assuring the growth of their thoughts by insinuating, +wheedling methods with which they continued to flatter them throughout +their careers, taking pains not to lose sight of them in their later +life, and by sending them affectionate letters like those which the +Dominican Lacordaire so skillfully wrote to his former pupils of +Sorreze. + +Des Esseintes took note of this system which had been so fruitlessly +expended on him. His stubborn, captious and inquisitive character, +disposed to controversies, had prevented him from being modelled by +their discipline or subdued by their lessons. His scepticism had +increased after he left the precincts of the college. His association +with a legitimist, intolerant and shallow society, his conversations +with unintelligent church wardens and abbots, whose blunders tore away +the veil so subtly woven by the Jesuits, had still more fortified his +spirit of independence and increased his scorn for any faith whatever. + +He had deemed himself free of all bonds and constraints. Unlike most +graduates of _lycees_ or private schools, he had preserved a vivid +memory of his college and of his masters. And now, as he considered +these matters, he asked himself if the seeds sown until now on barren +soil were not beginning to take root. + +For several days, in fact, his soul had been strangely perturbed. At +moments, he felt himself veering towards religion. Then, at the +slightest approach of reason, his faith would dissolve. Yet he +remained deeply troubled. + +Analyzing himself, he was well aware that he would never possess a +truly Christian spirit of humility and penitence. He knew without a +doubt that he would never experience that moment of grace mentioned by +Lacordaire, "when the last shaft of light penetrates the soul and +unites the truths there lying dispersed." He never felt the need of +mortification and of prayer, without which no conversion in possible, +if one is to believe the majority of priests. He had no desire to +implore a God whose forgiveness seemed most improbable. Yet the +sympathy he felt for his old teachers lent him an interest in their +works and doctrines. Those inimitable accents of conviction, those +ardent voices of men of indubitably superior intelligence returned to +him and led him to doubt his own mind and strength. Amid the solitude +in which he lived, without new nourishment, without any fresh +experiences, without any renovation of thought, without that exchange +of sensations common to society, in this unnatural confinement in +which he persisted, all the questionings forgotten during his stay in +Paris were revived as active irritants. The reading of his beloved +Latin works, almost all of them written by bishops and monks, had +doubtless contributed to this crisis. Enveloped in a convent-like +atmosphere, in a heady perfume of incense, his nervous brain had grown +excitable. And by an association of ideas, these books had driven back +the memories of his life as a young man, revealing in full light the +years spent with the Fathers. + +"There is no doubt about it," Des Esseintes mused, as he reasoned the +matter and followed the progress of this introduction of the Jesuitic +spirit into Fontenay. "Since my childhood, although unaware of it, I +have had this leaven which has never fermented. The weakness I have +always borne for religious subjects is perhaps a positive proof of +it." But he sought to persuade himself to the contrary, disturbed at +no longer being his own master. He searched for motives; it had +required a struggle for him to abandon things sacerdotal, since the +Church alone had treasured objects of art--the lost forms of past +ages. Even in its wretched modern reproductions, she had preserved the +contours of the gold and silver ornaments, the charm of chalices +curving like petunias, and the charm of pyxes with their chaste sides; +even in aluminum and imitation enamels and colored glasses, she had +preserved the grace of vanished modes. In short, most of the precious +objects now to be found in the Cluny museum, which have miraculously +escaped the crude barbarism of the philistines, come from the ancient +French abbeys. And just as the Church had preserved philosophy and +history and letters from barbarism in the Middle Ages, so had she +saved the plastic arts, bringing to our own days those marvelous +fabrics and jewelries which the makers of sacred objects spoil to the +best of their ability, without being able to destroy the originally +exquisite form. It followed, then, that there was nothing surprising +in his having bought these old trinkets, in his having, together with +a number of other collectors, purchased such relics from the antique +shops of Paris and the second-hand dealers of the provinces. + +But these reasons he evoked in vain. He did not wholly succeed in +convincing himself. He persisted in considering religion as a superb +legend, a magnificent imposture. Yet, despite his convictions, his +scepticism began to be shattered. + +This was the singular fact he was obliged to face: he was less +confident now than in childhood, when he had been directly under the +influence of the Jesuits, when their instruction could not be shunned, +when he was in their hands and belonged to them body and soul, without +family ties, with no outside influence powerful enough to counteract +their precepts. Moreover, they had inculcated in him a certain +tendency towards the marvelous which, interned and exercised in the +close quarters of his fixed ideas, had slowly and obscurely developed +in his soul, until today it was blossoming in his solitude, affecting +his spirit, regardless of arguments. + +By examining the process of his reasoning, by seeking to unite its +threads and to discover its sources and causes, he concluded that his +previous mode of living was derived from the education he had +received. Thus, his tendencies towards artificiality and his craving +for eccentricity, were no more than the results of specious studies, +spiritual refinements and quasi-theological speculations. They were, +in the last analysis, ecstacies, aspirations towards an ideal, towards +an unknown universe as desirable as that promised us by the Holy +Scriptures. + +He curbed his thoughts sharply and broke the thread of his +reflections. + +"Well!" he thought, vexed, "I am even more affected than I had +imagined. Here am I arguing with myself like a very casuist!" + +He was left pensive, agitated by a vague fear. Certainly, if +Lacordaire's theory were sound, he had nothing to be afraid of, since +the magic touch of conversion is not to be consummated in a moment. To +bring about the explosion, the ground must be constantly and +assiduously mined. But just as the romancers speak of the thunderclap +of love, so do theologians also speak of the thunderclap of +conversion. No one was safe, should one admit the truth of this +doctrine. There was no longer any need of self-analysis, of paying +heed to presentiments, of taking preventive measures. The psychology +of mysticism was void. Things were so because they were so, and that +was all. + +"I am really becoming stupid," thought Des Esseintes. "The very fear +of this malady will end by bringing it on, if this continues." + +He partially succeeded in shaking off this influence. The memories of +his life with the Jesuits waned, only to be replaced by other +thoughts. He was entirely dominated by morbid abstractions. Despite +himself, he thought of the contradictory interpretations of the +dogmas, of the lost apostasies of Father Labbe, recorded in the works +on the Decrees. Fragments of these schisms, scraps of these heresies +which for centuries had divided the Churches of the Orient and the +Occident, returned to him. + +Here, Nestorius denied the title of "Mother of God" to the Virgin +because, in the mystery of the Incarnation, it was not God but rather +a human being she had nourished in her womb; there, Eutyches declared +that Christ's image could not resemble that of other men, since +divinity had chosen to dwell in his body and had consequently entirely +altered the form of everything. Other quibblers maintained that the +Redeemer had had no body at all and that this expression of the holy +books must be taken figuratively, while Tertullian put forth his +famous, semi-materialistic axiom: "Only that which is not, has no +body; everything which is, has a body fitting it." Finally, this +ancient question, debated for years, demanded an answer: was Christ +hanged on the cross, or was it the Trinity which had suffered as one +in its triple hypostasis, on the cross at Calvary? And mechanically, +like a lesson long ago learned, he proposed the questions to himself +and answered them. + +For several days his brain was a swarm of paradoxes, subtleties and +hair-splittings, a skein of rules as complicated as the articles of +the codes that involved the sense of everything, indulged in puns and +ended in a most tenuous and singular celestial jurisprudence. The +abstract side vanished, in its turn, and under the influence of the +Gustave Moreau paintings of the wall, yielded to a concrete succession +of pictures. + +Before him he saw marching a procession of prelates. The +archimandrites and patriarchs, their white beards waving during the +reading of the prayers, lifted golden arms to bless kneeling throngs. +He saw silent files of penitents marching into dim crypts. Before him +rose vast cathedrals where white monks intoned from pulpits. Just as +De Quincey, having taken a dose of opium and uttered the word "Consul +Romanus," evoked entire pages of Livius, and beheld the solemn advance +of the consuls and the magnificent, pompous march of the Roman armies, +so he, at a theological expression, paused breathless as he viewed the +onrush of penitents and the churchly apparitions which detached +themselves from the glowing depths of the basilica. These scenes held +him enchanted. They moved from age to age, culminating in the modern +religious ceremonies, bathing his soul in a tender, mournful infinity +of music. + +On this plane, no reasonings were necessary; there were no further +contests to be endured. He had an indescribable impression of respect +and fear. His artistic sense was conquered by the skillfully +calculated Catholic rituals. His nerves quivered at these memories. +Then, in sudden rebellion, in a sudden reversion, monstrous ideas were +born in him, fancies concerning those sacrileges warned against by the +manual of the Father confessors, of the scandalous, impure desecration +of holy water and sacred oil. The Demon, a powerful rival, now stood +against an omnipotent God. A frightful grandeur seemed to Des +Esseintes to emanate from a crime committed in church by a believer +bent, with blasphemously horrible glee and sadistic joy, over such +revered objects, covering them with outrages and saturating them in +opprobrium. + +Before him were conjured up the madnesses of magic, of the black mass, +of the witches' revels, of terrors of possessions and of exorcisms. He +reached the point where he wondered if he were not committing a +sacrilege in possessing objects which had once been consecrated: the +Church canons, chasubles and pyx covers. And this idea of a state of +sin imparted to him a mixed sensation of pride and relief. The +pleasures of sacrilege were unravelled from the skein of this idea, +but these were debatable sacrileges, in any case, and hardly serious, +since he really loved these objects and did not pollute them by +misuse. In this wise he lulled himself with prudent and cowardly +thoughts, the caution of his soul forbidding obvious crimes and +depriving him of the courage necessary to the consummation of +frightful and deliberate sins. + +Little by little this tendency to ineffectual quibbling disappeared. +In his mind's eye he saw the panorama of the Church with its +hereditary influence on humanity through the centuries. He imagined it +as imposing and suffering, emphasizing to man the horror of life, the +infelicity of man's destiny; preaching patience, penitence and the +spirit of sacrifice; seeking to heal wounds, while it displayed the +bleeding wounds of Christ; bespeaking divine privileges; promising the +richest part of paradise to the afflicted; exhorting humanity to +suffer and to render to God, like a holocaust, its trials and +offenses, its vicissitudes and pains. Thus the Church grew truly +eloquent, the beneficent mother of the oppressed, the eternal menace +of oppressors and despots. + +Here, Des Esseintes was on firm ground. He was thoroughly satisfied +with this admission of social ordure, but he revolted against the +vague hope of remedy in the beyond. Schopenhauer was more true. His +doctrine and that of the Church started from common premises. He, too, +based his system on the vileness of the world; he, too, like the +author of the _Imitation of Christ_, uttered that grievous outcry: +"Truly life on earth is wretched." He, also, preached the nothingness +of life, the advantages of solitude, and warned humanity that no +matter what it does, in whatever direction it may turn, it must remain +wretched, the poor by reason of the sufferings entailed by want, the +rich by reason of the unconquerable weariness engendered by abundance; +but this philosophy promised no universal remedies, did not entice one +with false hopes, so as to minimize the inevitable evils of life. + +He did not affirm the revolting conception of original sin, nor did he +feel inclined to argue that it is a beneficent God who protects the +worthless and wicked, rains misfortunes on children, stultifies the +aged and afflicts the innocent. He did not exalt the virtues of a +Providence which has invented that useless, incomprehensible, unjust +and senseless abomination, physical suffering. Far from seeking to +justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and +afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: "If a God has made this +world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness +would rend my heart." + +Ah! Schopenhauer alone was right. Compared with these treatises of +spiritual hygiene, of what avail were the evangelical pharmacopoeias? +He did not claim to cure anything, and he offered no alleviation to +the sick. But his theory of pessimism was, in the end, the great +consoler of choice intellects and lofty souls. He revealed society as +it is, asserted woman's inherent stupidity, indicated the safest +course, preserved you from disillusionment by warning you to restrain +hopes as much as possible, to refuse to yield to their allurement, to +deem yourself fortunate, finally, if they did not come toppling about +your ears at some unexpected moment. + +Traversing the same path as the _Imitation_, this theory, too, ended +in similar highways of resignation and indifference, but without going +astray in mysterious labyrinths and remote roads. + +But if this resignation, which was obviously the only outcome of the +deplorable condition of things and their irremediability, was open to +the spiritually rich, it was all the more difficult of approach to the +poor whose passions and cravings were more easily satisfied by the +benefits of religion. + +These reflections relieved Des Esseintes of a heavy burden. The +aphorisms of the great German calmed his excited thoughts, and the +points of contact in these two doctrines helped him to correlate them; +and he could never forget that poignant and poetic Catholicism in +which he had bathed, and whose essence he had long ago absorbed. + +These reversions to religion, these intimations of faith tormented him +particularly since the changes that had lately taken place in his +health. Their progress coincided with that of his recent nervous +disorders. + +He had been tortured since his youth by inexplicable aversions, by +shudderings which chilled his spine and made him grit his teeth, as, +for example, when he saw a girl wringing wet linen. These reactions +had long persisted. Even now he suffered poignantly when he heard the +tearing of cloth, the rubbing of a finger against a piece of chalk, or +a hand touching a bit of moire. + +The excesses of his youthful life, the exaggerated tension of his mind +had strangely aggravated his earliest nervous disorder, and had +thinned the already impoverished blood of his race. In Paris, he had +been compelled to submit to hydrotherapic treatments for his trembling +fingers, frightful pains, neuralgic strokes which cut his face in two, +drummed maddeningly against his temples, pricked his eyelids +agonizingly and induced a nausea which could be dispelled only by +lying flat on his back in the dark. + +These afflictions had gradually disappeared, thanks to a more +regulated and sane mode of living. They now returned in another form, +attacking his whole body. The pains left his head, but affected his +inflated stomach. His entrails seemed pierced by hot bars of iron. A +nervous cough racked him at regular intervals, awakening and almost +strangling him in his bed. Then his appetite forsook him; gaseous, hot +acids and dry heats coursed through his stomach. He grew swollen, was +choked for breath, and could not endure his clothes after each attempt +at eating. + +He shunned alcoholic beverages, coffee and tea, and drank only milk. +And he took recourse to baths of cold water and dosed himself with +assafoetida, valerian and quinine. He even felt a desire to go out, +and strolled about the country when the rainy days came to make it +desolate and still. He obliged himself to take exercise. As a last +resort, he temporarily abandoned his books and, corroded with ennui, +determined to make his listless life tolerable by realizing a project +he had long deferred through laziness and a dislike of change, since +his installment at Fontenay. + +Being no longer able to intoxicate himself with the felicities of +style, with the delicious witchery of the rare epithet which, while +remaining precise, yet opens to the imagination of the initiate +infinite and distant vistas, he determined to give the finishing +touches to the decorations of his home. He would procure precious +hot-house flowers and thus permit himself a material occupation which +might distract him, calm his nerves and rest his brain. He also hoped +that the sight of their strange and splendid nuances would in some +degree atone for the fanciful and genuine colors of style which he was +for the time to lose from his literary diet. + + + + + Chapter 8 + + +He had always been passionately fond of flowers, but during his +residence at Jutigny, that love had been lavished upon flowers of all +sorts; he had never cultivated distinctions and discriminations in +regard to them. Now his taste in this direction had grown refined and +self-conscious. + +For a long time he had scorned the popular plants which grow in flat +baskets, in watered pots, under green awnings or under the red +parasols of Parisian markets. + +Simultaneous with the refinement of his literary taste and his +preoccupations with art, which permitted him to be content only in the +presence of choice creations, distilled by subtly troubled brains, and +simultaneous with the weariness he began to feel in the presence of +popular ideas, his love for flowers had grown purged of all impurities +and lees, and had become clarified. + +He compared a florist's shop to a microcosm wherein all the categories +of society are represented. Here are poor common flowers, the kind +found in hovels, which are truly at home only when resting on ledges +of garret windows, their roots thrust into milk bottles and old pans, +like the gilly-flower for example. + +And one also finds stupid and pretentious flowers like the rose which +belongs in the porcelain flowerpots painted by young girls. + +Then, there are flowers of noble lineage like the orchid, so delicate +and charming, at once cold and palpitating, exotic flowers exiled in +the heated glass palaces of Paris, princesses of the vegetable kingdom +living in solitude, having absolutely nothing in common with the +street plants and other bourgeois flora. + +He permitted himself to feel a certain interest and pity only for the +popular flowers enfeebled by their nearness to the odors of sinks and +drains in the poor quarters. In revenge he detested the bouquets +harmonizing with the cream and gold rooms of pretentious houses. For +the joy of his eyes he reserved those distinguished, rare blooms which +had been brought from distant lands and whose lives were sustained by +artful devices under artificial equators. + +But this very choice, this predilection for the conservatory plants +had itself changed under the influence of his mode of thought. +Formerly, during his Parisian days, his love for artificiality had led +him to abandon real flowers and to use in their place replicas +faithfully executed by means of the miracles performed with India +rubber and wire, calico and taffeta, paper and silk. He was the +possessor of a marvelous collection of tropical plants, the result of +the labors of skilful artists who knew how to follow nature and +recreate her step by step, taking the flower as a bud, leading it to +its full development, even imitating its decline, reaching such a +point of perfection as to convey every nuance--the most fugitive +expressions of the flower when it opens at dawn and closes at evening, +observing the appearance of the petals curled by the wind or rumpled +by the rain, applying dew drops of gum on its matutinal corollas; +shaping it in full bloom, when the branches bend under the burden of +their sap, or showing the dried stem and shrivelled cupules, when +calyxes are thrown off and leaves fall to the ground. + +This wonderful art had held him entranced for a long while, but now he +was dreaming of another experiment. + +He wished to go one step beyond. Instead of artificial flowers +imitating real flowers, natural flowers should mimic the artificial +ones. + +He directed his ideas to this end and had not to seek long or go far, +since his house lay in the very heart of a famous horticultural +region. He visited the conservatories of the Avenue de Chatillon and +of the Aunay valley, and returned exhausted, his purse empty, +astonished at the strange forms of vegetation he had seen, thinking of +nothing but the species he had acquired and continually haunted by +memories of magnificent and fantastic plants. + +The flowers came several days later. + +Des Esseintes holding a list in his hands, verified each one of his +purchases. The gardeners from their wagons brought a collection of +caladiums which sustained enormous heartshaped leaves on turgid hairy +stalks; while preserving an air of relationship with its neighbor, no +one leaf repeated the same pattern. + +Others were equally extraordinary. The roses like the _Virginale_ +seemed cut out of varnished cloth or oil-silks; the white ones, like +the _Albano_, appeared to have been cut out of an ox's transparent +pleura, or the diaphanous bladder of a pig. Some, particularly the +_Madame Mame_, imitated zinc and parodied pieces of stamped metal +having a hue of emperor green, stained by drops of oil paint and by +spots of white and red lead; others like the _Bosphorous_, gave the +illusion of a starched calico in crimson and myrtle green; still +others, like the _Aurora Borealis_, displayed leaves having the color +of raw meat, streaked with purple sides, violet fibrils, tumefied +leaves from which oozed blue wine and blood. + +The _Albano_ and the _Aurora_ sounded the two extreme notes of +temperament, the apoplexy and chlorosis of this plant. + +The gardeners brought still other varieties which had the appearance +of artificial skin ridged with false veins, and most of them looked as +though consumed by syphilis and leprosy, for they exhibited livid +surfaces of flesh veined with scarlet rash and damasked with +eruptions. Some had the deep red hue of scars that have just closed or +the dark tint of incipient scabs. Others were marked with matter +raised by scaldings. There were forms which exhibited shaggy skins +hollowed by ulcers and relieved by cankers. And a few appeared +embossed with wounds, covered with black mercurial hog lard, with +green unguents of belladonna smeared with grains of dust and the +yellow micas of iodoforme. + +Collected in his home, these flowers seemed to Des Esseintes more +monstrous than when he had beheld them, confused with others among the +glass rooms of the conservatory. + +"_Sapristi!_" he exclaimed enthusiastically. + +A new plant, modelled like the Caladiums, the _Alocasia Metallica_, +excited him even more. It was coated with a layer of bronze green on +which glanced silver reflections. It was the masterpiece of +artificiality. It could be called a piece of stove pipe, cut by a +chimney-maker into the form of a pike head. + +The men next brought clusters of leaves, lozenge-like in shape and +bottle-green in color. In the center rose a rod at whose end a +varnished ace of hearts swayed. As though meaning to defy all +conceivable forms of plants, a fleshy stalk climbed through the heart +of this intense vermilion ace--a stalk that in some specimens was +straight, in others showed ringlets like a pig's tail. + +It was the _Anthurium_, an aroid recently imported into France from +Columbia; a variety of that family to which also belonged an +_Amorphophallus_, a Cochin China plant with leaves shaped like +fish-knives, with long dark stems seamed with gashes, like lambs +flecked with black. + +Des Esseintes exulted. + +They brought a new batch of monstrosities from the wagon: +_Echinopses_, issuing from padded compresses with rose-colored flowers +that looked like the pitiful stumps; gaping _Nidularia_ revealing +skinless foundations in steel plates; _Tillandsia Lindeni_, the color +of wine must, with jagged scrapers; _Cypripedia_, with complicated +contours, a crazy piece of work seemingly designed by a crazy +inventor. They looked like sabots or like a lady's work-table on which +lies a human tongue with taut filaments, such as one sees designed on +the illustrated pages of works treating of the diseases of the throat +and mouth; two little side-pieces, of a red jujube color, which +appeared to have been borrowed from a child's toy mill completed this +singular collection of a tongue's underside with the color of slate +and wine lees, and of a glossy pocket from whose lining oozed a +viscous glue. + +He could not remove his eyes from this unnatural orchid which had been +brought from India. Then the gardeners, impatient at his +procrastinations, themselves began to read the labels fastened to the +pots they were carrying in. + +Bewildered, Des Esseintes looked on and listened to the cacophonous +sounds of the names: the _Encephalartos horridus_, a gigantic iron +rust-colored artichoke, like those put on portals of chateaux to foil +wall climbers; the _Cocos Micania_, a sort of notched and slender palm +surrounded by tall leaves resembling paddles and oars; the _Zamia +Lehmanni_, an immense pineapple, a wondrous Chester leaf, planted in +sweet-heather soil, its top bristling with barbed javelins and jagged +arrows; the _Cibotium Spectabile_, surpassing the others by the +craziness of its structure, hurling a defiance to revery, as it +darted, through the palmated foliage, an enormous orang-outang tail, a +hairy dark tail whose end was twisted into the shape of a bishop's +cross. + +But he gave little heed, for he was impatiently awaiting the series of +plants which most bewitched him, the vegetable ghouls, the carnivorous +plants; the _Antilles Fly-Trap_, with its shaggy border, secreting a +digestive liquid, armed with crooked prickles coiling around each +other, forming a grating about the imprisoned insect; the _Drosera_ of +the peat-bogs, provided with glandular hair; the _Sarracena_ and the +_Cephalothus_, opening greedy horns capable of digesting and absorbing +real meat; lastly, the _Nepenthes_, whose capricious appearance +transcends all limits of eccentric forms. + +He never wearied of turning in his hands the pot in which this floral +extravagance stirred. It imitated the gum-tree whose long leaf of dark +metallic green it possessed, but it differed in that a green string +hung from the end of its leaf, an umbilic cord supporting a greenish +urn, streaked with jasper, a sort of German porcelain pipe, a strange +bird's nest which tranquilly swung about, revealing an interior +covered with hair. + +"This is really something worth while," Des Esseintes murmured. + +He was forced to tear himself away, for the gardeners, anxious to +leave, were emptying the wagons of their contents and depositing, +without any semblance of order, the tuberous _Begonias_ and black +_Crotons_ stained like sheet iron with Saturn red. + +Then he perceived that one name still remained on his list. It was the +_Cattleya_ of New Granada. On it was designed a little winged bell of +a faded lilac, an almost dead mauve. He approached, placed his nose +above the plant and quickly recoiled. It exhaled an odor of toy boxes +of painted pine; it recalled the horrors of a New Year's Day. + +He felt that he would do well to mistrust it and he almost regretted +having admitted, among the scentless plants, this orchid which evoked +the most disagreeable memories. + +As soon as he was alone his gaze took in this vegetable tide which +foamed in the vestibule. Intermingled with each other, they crossed +their swords, their krisses and stanchions, taking on a resemblance to +a green pile of arms, above which, like barbaric penons, floated +flowers with hard dazzling colors. + +The air of the room grew rarefied. Then, in the shadowy dimness of a +corner, near the floor, a white soft light crept. + +He approached and perceived that the phenomenon came from the +_Rhizomorphes_ which threw out these night-lamp gleams while +respiring. + +"These plants are amazing," he reflected. Then he drew back to let his +eye encompass the whole collection at a glance. His purpose was +achieved. Not one single specimen seemed real; the cloth, paper, +porcelain and metal seemed to have been loaned by man to nature to +enable her to create her monstrosities. When unable to imitate man's +handiwork, nature had been reduced to copying the inner membranes of +animals, to borrowing the vivid tints of their rotting flesh, their +magnificent corruptions. + +"All is syphilis," thought Des Esseintes, his eye riveted upon the +horrible streaked stainings of the Caladium plants caressed by a ray +of light. And he beheld a sudden vision of humanity consumed through +the centuries by the virus of this disease. Since the world's +beginnings, every single creature had, from sire to son, transmitted +the imperishable heritage, the eternal malady which has ravaged man's +ancestors and whose effects are visible even in the bones of old +fossils that have been exhumed. + +The disease had swept on through the centuries gaining momentum. It +even raged today, concealed in obscure sufferings, dissimulated under +symptoms of headaches and bronchitis, hysterics and gout. It crept to +the surface from time to time, preferably attacking the ill-nourished +and the poverty stricken, spotting faces with gold pieces, ironically +decorating the faces of poor wretches, stamping the mark of money on +their skins to aggravate their unhappiness. + +And here on the colored leaves of the plants it was resurgent in its +original splendor. + +"It is true," pursued Des Esseintes, returning to the course of +reasoning he had momentarily abandoned, "it is true that most often +nature, left alone, is incapable of begetting such perverse and sickly +specimens. She furnishes the original substance, the germ and the +earth, the nourishing womb and the elements of the plant which man +then sets up, models, paints, and sculpts as he wills. Limited, +stubborn and formless though she be, nature has at last been subjected +and her master has succeeded in changing, through chemical reaction, +the earth's substances, in using combinations which had been long +matured, cross-fertilization processes long prepared, in making use of +slips and graftings, and man now forces differently colored flowers in +the same species, invests new tones for her, modifies to his will the +long-standing form of her plants, polishes the rough clods, puts an +end to the period of botch work, places his stamp on them, imposes on +them the mark of his own unique art." + +"It cannot be gainsaid," he thought, resuming his reflections, "that +man in several years is able to effect a selection which slothful +nature can produce only after centuries. Decidedly the horticulturists +are the real artists nowadays." + +He was a little tired and he felt stifled in this atmosphere of +crowded plants. The promenades he had taken during the last few days +had exhausted him. The transition had been too sudden from the tepid +atmosphere of his room to the out-of-doors, from the placid +tranquillity of a reclusive life to an active one. He left the +vestibule and stretched out on his bed to rest, but, absorbed by this +new fancy of his, his mind, even in his sleep, could not lessen its +tension and he was soon wandering among the gloomy insanities of a +nightmare. + +He found himself in the center of a walk, in the heart of the wood; +twilight had fallen. He was strolling by the side of a woman whom he +had never seen before. She was emaciated and had flaxen hair, a +bulldog face, freckles on her cheeks, crooked teeth projecting under a +flat nose. She wore a nurse's white apron, a long neckerchief, torn in +strips on her bosom; half-shoes like those worn by Prussian soldiers +and a black bonnet adorned with frillings and trimmed with a rosette. + +There was a foreign look about her, like that of a mountebank at a +fair. + +He asked himself who the woman could be; he felt that she had long +been an intimate part of his life; vainly he sought her origin, her +name, her profession, her reason for being. No recollection of this +liaison, which was inexplicable and yet positive, rewarded him. + +He was searching his past for a clue, when a strange figure suddenly +appeared on horse-back before them, trotting about for a moment and +then turning around in its saddle. Des Esseintes' heart almost stopped +beating and he stood riveted to the spot with horror. He nearly +fainted. This enigmatic, sexless figure was green; through her violet +eyelids the eyes were terrible in their cold blue; pimples surrounded +her mouth; horribly emaciated, skeleton arms bared to the elbows +issued from ragged tattered sleeves and trembled feverishly; and the +skinny legs shivered in shoes that were several sizes too large. + +The ghastly eyes were fixed on Des Esseintes, penetrating him, +freezing his very marrow; wilder than ever, the bulldog woman threw +herself at him and commenced to howl like a dog at the killing, her +head hanging on her rigid neck. + +Suddenly he understood the meaning of the frightful vision. Before him +was the image of Syphilis. + +Pursued by fear and quite beside himself, he sped down a pathway at +top speed and gained a pavillion standing among the laburnums to the +left, where he fell into a chair, in the passage way. + +After a few moments, when he was beginning to recover his breath, the +sound of sobbing made him lift his head. The bulldog woman was in +front of him and, grotesque and woeful, while warm tears fell from her +eyes, she told him that she had lost her teeth in her flight. As she +spoke she drew clay pipes from the pocket of her nurse's apron, +breaking them and shoving pieces of the stems into the hollows of her +gums. + +"But she is really absurd," Des Esseintes told himself. "These stems +will never stick." And, as a matter of fact, they dropped out one +after another. + +At this moment were heard the galloping sounds of an approaching +horse. A fearful terror pierced Des Esseintes. His limbs gave way. The +galloping grew louder. Despair brought him sharply to his senses. He +threw himself upon the woman who was stamping on the pipe bowls, +entreating her to be silent, not to give notice of their presence by +the sound of her shoes. She writhed and struggled in his grip; he led +her to the end of the corridor, strangling her to prevent her from +crying out. Suddenly he noticed the door of a coffee house, with green +Venetian shutters. It was unlocked; he pushed it, rushed in headlong +and then paused. + +Before him, in the center of a vast glade, huge white pierrots were +leaping rabbit-like under the rays of the moon. + +Tears of discouragement welled to his eyes; never, no never would he +succeed in crossing the threshold. "I shall be crushed," he thought. +And as though to justify his fears, the ranks of tall pierrots swarmed +and multiplied; their somersaults now covered the entire horizon, the +whole sky on which they landed now on their heads, now on their feet. + +Then the hoof beats paused. He was in the passage, behind a round +skylight. More dead than alive, Des Esseintes turned about and through +the round window beheld projecting erect ears, yellow teeth, nostrils +from which breathed two jets of vapor smelling of phenol. + +He sank to the ground, renouncing all ideas of flight or of +resistance. He closed his eyes so as not to behold the horrible gaze +of Syphilis which penetrated through the wall, which even pierced his +closed lids, which he felt gliding over his moist spine, over his body +whose hair bristled in pools of cold sweat. He waited for the worst +and even hoped for the _coup de grace_ to end everything. A moment +which seemed to last a century passed. Shuddering, he opened his eyes. +Everything had vanished. Without any transition, as though by some +stage device, a frightful mineral landscape receded into the distance, +a wan, dead, waste, gullied landscape. A light illumined this desolate +site, a peaceful white light that recalled gleams of phosphorus +dissolved in oil. + +Something that stirred on the ground became a deathly pale, nude woman +whose feet were covered with green silk stockings. + +He contemplated her with curiosity. As though frizzed by overheated +irons, her hair curled, becoming straight again at the end; her +distended nostrils were the color of roast veal. Her eyes were +desirous, and she called to him in low tones. + +He had no time to answer, for already the woman was changing. +Flamboyant colors passed and repassed in her eyes. Her lips were +stained with a furious Anthurium red. The nipples of her breasts +flashed, painted like two pods of red pepper. + +A sudden intuition came to him. "It is the Flower," he said. And his +reasoning mania persisted in his nightmare. + +Then he observed the frightful irritation of the breasts and mouth, +discovered spots of bister and copper on the skin of her body, and +recoiled bewildered. But the woman's eyes fascinated him and he +advanced slowly, attempting to thrust his heels into the earth so as +not to move, letting himself fall, and yet lifting himself to reach +her. Just as he touched her, the dark _Amorphophalli_ leaped up from +all sides and thrust their leaves into his abdomen which rose and fell +like a sea. He had broken all the plants, experiencing a limitless +disgust in seeing these warm, firm stems stirring in his hands. +Suddenly the detested plants had disappeared and two arms sought to +enlace him. A terrible anguish made his heart beat furiously, for the +eyes, the horrible eyes of the woman, had become a clear, cold and +terrible blue. He made a superhuman effort to free himself from her +embrace, but she held him with an irresistible movement. He beheld the +wild _Nidularium_ which yawned, bleeding, in steel plates. + +With his body he touched the hideous wound of this plant. He felt +himself dying, awoke with a start, suffocating, frozen, mad with fear +and sighing: "Ah! thank God, it was but a dream!" + + + + + Chapter 9 + + +These nightmares attacked him repeatedly. He was afraid to fall +asleep. For hours he remained stretched on his bed, now a prey to +feverish and agitated wakefulness, now in the grip of oppressive +dreams in which he tumbled down flights of stairs and felt himself +sinking, powerless, into abysmal depths. + +His nervous attacks, which had abated for several days, became acute, +more violent and obstinate than ever, unearthing new tortures. + +The bed covers tormented him. He stifled under the sheets, his body +smarted and tingled as though stung by swarms of insects. These +symptoms were augmented by a dull pain in his jaws and a throbbing in +his temples which seemed to be gripped in a vise. + +His alarm increased; but unfortunately the means of subduing the +inexorable malady were not at hand. He had unsuccessfully sought to +install a hydropathic apparatus in his dressing room. But the +impossibility of forcing water to the height on which his house was +perched, and the difficulty of procuring water even in the village +where the fountains functioned sparingly and only at certain hours of +the day, caused him to renounce the project. Since he could not have +floods of water playing on him from the nozzle of a hose, (the only +efficacious means of overcoming his insomnia and calming his nerves +through its action on his spinal column) he was reduced to brief +sprays or to mere cold baths, followed by energetic massages applied +by his servant with the aid of a horse-hair glove. + +But these measures failed to stem the march of his nervous disorder. +At best they afforded him a few hours' relief, dearly paid for by the +return of the attacks in an even more virulent form. + +His ennui passed all bounds. His pleasure in the possession of his +wonderful flowers was exhausted. Their textures and nuances palled on +him. Besides, despite the care he lavished on them, most of his plants +drooped. He had them removed from his rooms, but in his state of +extreme excitability, their very absence exasperated him, for his eyes +were pained by the void. + +To while away the interminable hours, he had recourse to his +portfolios of prints, and arranged his Goyas. The first impressions of +certain plates of the _Caprices_, recognizable as proofs by their +reddish hues, which he had bought at auction at a high price, +comforted him, and he lost himself in them, following the painter's +fantasies, distracted by his vertiginous scenes, his witches astride +on cats, his women striving to pluck out the teeth of a hanged man, +his bandits, his succubi, his demons and dwarfs. + +Then he examined his other series of etchings and aquatints, his +_Proverbs_ with their macabre horror, his war subjects with their wild +rage, finally his plate of the Garot, of which he cherished a +marvelous trial proof, printed on heavy water-marked paper, unmounted. + +Goya's savage verve and keenly fanciful talent delighted him, but the +universal admiration his works had won nevertheless estranged him +slightly. And for years he had refused to frame them for fear that the +first blundering fool who caught sight of them might deem it necessary +to fly into banal and facile raptures before them. + +The same applied to his Rembrandts which he examined from time to +time, half secretly; and if it be true that the loveliest tune +imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public +begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own, the work of +art which does not remain indifferent to the spurious artists, which +is not contested by fools, and which is not satisfied with awakening +the enthusiasm of the few, by this very fact becomes profaned, trite, +almost repulsive to the initiate. + +This promiscuity in admiration, furthermore, was one of the greatest +sources of regret in his life. Incomprehensible successes had forever +spoiled for him many pictures and books once cherished and dear. +Approved by the mob, they began to reveal imperceptible defects to +him, and he rejected them, wondering meanwhile if his perceptions were +not growing blunted. + +He closed his portfolios and, completely disconcerted, again plunged +into melancholy. To divert the current of his thoughts and cool his +brain, he sought books that would soothe him and turned to the +romances of Dickens, those charming novels which are so satisfying to +invalids and convalescents who might grow fatigued by works of a more +profound and vigorous nature. + +But they produced an effect contrary to his expectations. These chaste +lovers, these protesting heroines garbed to the neck, loved among the +stars, confined themselves to lowered eyes and blushes, wept tears of +joy and clasped hands--an exaggeration of purity which threw him into +an opposite excess. By the law of contrast, he leaped from one extreme +to the other, let his imagination dwell on vibrant scenes between +human lovers, and mused on their sensual kisses and passionate +embraces. + +His mind wandered off from his book to worlds far removed from the +English prude: to wanton peccadilloes and salacious practices +condemned by the Church. He grew excited. The impotence of his mind +and body which he had supposed final, vanished. Solitude again acted +on his disordered nerves; he was once more obsessed, not by religion +itself, but by the acts and sins it forbids, by the subject of all its +obsecrations and threats. The carnal side, atrophied for months, which +had been stirred by the enervation of his pious readings, then brought +to a crisis by the English cant, came to the surface. His stimulated +senses carried him back to the past and he wallowed in memories of his +old sin. + +He rose and pensively opened a little box of vermeil with a lid of +aventurine. + +It was filled with violet bonbons. He took one up and pressed it +between his fingers, thinking of the strange properties of this +sugary, frosted sweetmeat. When his virility had been impaired, when +the thought of woman had roused in him no sharp regret or desire, he +had only to put one in his mouth, let it melt, and almost at once it +induced misty, languishing memories, infinitely tender. + +These bonbons invented by Siraudin and bearing the ridiculous name of +"Perles des Pyrenees" were each a drop of sarcanthus perfume, a drop +of feminine essence crystallized in a morsel of sugar. They penetrated +the papillae of the tongue, recalling the very savor of voluptuous +kisses. + +Usually he smiled as he inhaled this love aroma, this shadow of a +caress which for a moment restored the delights of women he had once +adored. Today they were not merely suggestive, they no longer served +as a delicate hint of his distant riotous past. They were become +powerful, thrusting aside the veils, exposing before his eyes the +importunate, corporeal and brutal reality. + +At the head of the procession of mistresses whom the fragrance of the +bonbons helped to place in bold relief, one paused, displaying long +white teeth, a satiny rose skin, a snub nose, mouse-colored eyes, and +close-cropped blond hair. + +This was Miss Urania, an American, with a vigorous body, sinewy limbs, +muscles of steel and arms of iron. + +She had been one of the most celebrated acrobats of the Circus. + +Des Esseintes had watched her attentively through many long evenings. +At first, she had seemed to him what she really was, a strong and +beautiful woman, but the desire to know her never troubled him. She +possessed nothing to recommend her in the eyes of a blase man, and yet +he returned to the Circus, allured by he knew not what, importuned by +a sentiment difficult to define. + +Gradually, as he watched her, a fantastic idea seized him. Her +graceful antics and arch feminine ways receded to the background of +his mind, replaced by her power and strength which had for him all the +charm of masculinity. Compared with her, Des Esseintes seemed to +himself a frail, effeminate creature, and he began to desire her as +ardently as an anaemic young girl might desire some loutish Hercules +whose arms could crush her in a strong embrace. + +One evening he finally decided to communicate with her and dispatched +one of the attendants on this errand. Miss Urania deemed it necessary +not to yield before a preliminary courtship; but she showed herself +amenable, as it was common gossip that Des Esseintes was rich and that +his name was instrumental in establishing women. + +But as soon as his wishes were granted, his disappointment surpassed +any he had yet experienced. He had persuaded himself that the American +woman would be as bestial and stupid as a wrestler at a county fair, +and instead her stupidity was of an altogether feminine nature. +Certainly, she lacked education and tact, had neither good sense nor +wit, and displayed an animal voracity at table, but she possessed all +the childish traits of a woman. Her manner and speech were coquettish +and affected, those of a silly, scandal-loving young girl. There was +absolutely nothing masculine about her. + +Furthermore, she was withdrawn and puritanical in her embraces, +displaying none of the brute force he had dreaded yet longed for, and +she was subject to none of the perturbations of his sex. + +Des Esseintes inevitably returned to the masculine role he had +momentarily abandoned. + +His impression of femininity, weakness, need of protection, of fear +even, disappeared. The illusion was no longer possible! Miss Urania +was an ordinary mistress, in no wise justifying the cerebral curiosity +she had at first awakened in him. + +Although the charm of her firm skin and magnificent beauty had at +first astonished and captivated Des Esseintes, he lost no time in +terminating this liaison, for his impotence was prematurely hastened +by the frozen and prudish caresses of this woman. + +And yet she was the first of all the women he had loved, now flitting +through his revery, to stand out. But if she was more strongly +imprinted on his memory than a host of others whose allurements had +been less spurious and more seductive, the reason must be ascribed to +her healthy animalism, to her exuberance which contrasted so +strikingly with the perfumed anaemia of the others, a faint suggestion +of which he found in the delicate Siraudin bonbon. + +Miss Urania haunted him by reason of her very difference, but almost +instantly, offended by the intrusion of this natural, crude aroma, the +antithesis of the scented confection, Des Esseintes returned to more +civilized exhalations and his thoughts reverted to his other +mistresses. They pressed upon him in a throng; but above them all rose +a woman whose startling talents had satisfied him for months. + +She was a little, slender brunette, with black eyes and burnished hair +parted on one side and sleeked down over her head. He had known her in +a cafe where she gave ventriloqual performances. + +Before the amazed patrons, she caused her tiny cardboard figures, +placed near each other on chairs, to talk; she conversed with the +animated mannikins while flies buzzed around the chandeliers. Then one +heard the rustling of the tense audience, surprised to find itself +seated and instinctively recoiling when they heard the rumbling of +imaginary carriages. + +Des Esseintes had been fascinated. He lost no time in winning over the +ventriloquist, tempting her with large sums of money. She delighted +him by the very contrast she exhibited to the American woman. This +brunette used strong perfumes and burned like a crater. Despite all +her blandishments, Des Esseintes wearied of her in a few short hours. +But this did not prevent him from letting himself be fleeced, for the +phenomenon of the ventriloquist attracted him more than did the charms +of the mistress. + +Certain plans he had long pondered upon ripened, and he decided to +bring them to fruition. + +One evening he ordered a tiny sphinx brought in--a sphinx carved from +black marble and resting in the classic pose with outstretched paws +and erect head. He also purchased a chimera of polychrome clay; it +brandished its mane of hair, and its sides resembled a pair of +bellows. These two images he placed in a corner of the room. Then he +extinguished the lamps, permitting the glowing embers to throw a dim +light around the room and to magnify the objects which were almost +immersed in gloom. + +Then he stretched out on a couch beside the woman whose motionless +figure was touched by the ember gleams, and waited. + +With strange intonations that he had long and patiently taught her, +she animated the two monsters; she did not even move her lips, she did +not even glance in their direction. + +And in the silence followed the marvelous dialogue of the Chimera and +the Sphinx; it was recited in deep guttural tones which were at first +raucous, then turned shrill and unearthly. + +"Here, Chimera, pause!" + +"Never!" + +Lulled by the admirable prose of Flaubert, he listened; he panted and +shivering sensations raced through his frame, when the Chimera uttered +the magical and solemn phrase: + +"New perfumes I seek, stranger flowers I seek, pleasures not yet +discovered." + +Ah! it was to him that this voice, mysterious as an incantation, +spoke; it was to him that this voice recounted her feverish agitation +for the unknown, her insatiable ideals, her imperative need to escape +from the horrible reality of existence, to leap beyond the confines of +thought, to grope towards the mists of elusive, unattainable art. The +poignant tragedy of his past failures rent his heart. Gently he +clasped the silent woman at his side, he sought refuge in her +nearness, like a child who is inconsolable; he was blind to the +sulkiness of the comedienne obliged to perform off-scene, in her +leisure moments, far from the spotlight. + +Their liaison continued, but his spells of exhaustion soon became +acute. His brain no longer sufficed to stimulate his benumbed body. No +longer did his nerves obey his will; and now the crazy whims of +dotards dominated him. Terrified by the approach of a disastrous +weakness in the presence of his mistress, he resorted to fear--that +oldest, most efficacious of excitants. + +A hoarse voice from behind the door would exclaim, while he held the +woman in his arms: "Open the door, woman, I know you're in there, and +with whom. Just wait, wait!" Instantly, like a libertine stirred by +fear of discovery in the open, he recovered his strength and hurled +himself madly upon the ventriloquist whose voice continued to bluster +outside the room. In this wise he experienced the pleasures of a +panic-stricken person. + +But this state, unfortunately, did not last long, and despite the sums +he paid her, the ventriloquist parted to offer herself to someone less +exigent and less complex. + +He had regretted her defection, and now, recalling her, the other +women seemed insipid, their childish graces and monotonous coquetry +disgusting him. + +In the ferment of his disordered brain, he delighted in mingling with +these recollections of his past, other more gloomy pleasures, as +theology qualifies the evocation of past, disgraceful acts. With the +physical visions he mingled spiritual ardors brought into play and +motivated by his old readings of the casuists, of the Busembaums and +the Dianas, of the Liguoris and the Sanchezes, treating of +transgressions against the sixth and ninth commandments of the +Decalogue. + +In awakening an almost divine ideal in this soul steeped in her +precepts--a soul possibly predisposed to the teachings of the Church +through hereditary influences dating back from the reign of Henry III, +religion had also stirred the illegitimate, forbidden enjoyment of the +senses. Licentious and mystical obsessions haunted his brain, they +mingled confusedly, and he would often be troubled by an unappeasable +desire to shun the vulgarities of the world and to plunge, far from +the customs and modes held in such reverence, into convulsions and +raptures which were holy or infernal and which, in either case, proved +too exhausting and enervating. + +He would arise prostrate from such reveries, fatigued and all but +lifeless. He would light the lamps and candles so as to flood the room +with light, for he hoped that by so doing he might possibly diminish +the intolerably persistent and dull throbbing of his arteries which +beat under his neck with redoubled strokes. + + + + + Chapter 10 + + +During the course of this malady which attacks impoverished races, +sudden calms succeed an attack. Strangely enough, Des Esseintes awoke +one morning recovered; no longer was he tormented by the throbbing of +his neck or by his racking cough. Instead, he had an ineffable +sensation of contentment, a lightness of mind in which thought was +sparklingly clear, turning from a turbid, opaque, green color to a +liquid iridescence magical with tender rainbow tints. + +This lasted several days. Then hallucinations of odor suddenly +appeared. + +His room was aromatic with the fragrance of frangipane; he tried to +ascertain if a bottle were not uncorked--no! not a bottle was to be +found in the room, and he passed into his study and thence to the +kitchen. Still the odor persisted. + +Des Esseintes rang for his servant and asked if he smelled anything. +The domestic sniffed the air and declared he could not detect any +perfume. There was no doubt about it: his nervous attacks had returned +again, under the appearance of a new illusion of the senses. + +Fatigued by the tenacity of this imaginary aroma, he resolved to steep +himself in real perfumes, hoping that this homeopathic treatment would +cure him or would at least drown the persistent odor. + +He betook himself to his dressing room. There, near an old baptistery +which he used as a wash basin, under a long mirror of forged iron, +which, like the edge of a well silvered by the moon, confined the +green dull surface of the mirror, were bottles of every conceivable +size and form, placed on ivory shelves. + +He set them on the table and divided them into two series: one of the +simple perfumes, pure extracts or spirits, the other of compound +perfumes, designated under the generic term of bouquets. + +He sank into an easy chair and meditated. + +He had long been skilled in the science of smell. He believed that +this sense could give one delights equal to those of hearing and +sight; each sense being susceptible, if naturally keen and if properly +cultivated, to new impressions, which it could intensify, coordinate +and compose into that unity which constitutes a creative work. And it +was not more abnormal and unnatural that an art should be called into +existence by disengaging odors than that another art should be evoked +by detaching sound waves or by striking the eye with diversely colored +rays. But if no person could discern, without intuition developed by +study, a painting by a master from a daub, a melody of Beethoven from +one by Clapisson, no more could any one at first, without preliminary +initiation, help confusing a bouquet invented by a sincere artist with +a pot pourri made by some manufacturer to be sold in groceries and +bazaars. + +In this art, the branch devoted to achieving certain effects by +artificial methods particularly delighted him. + +Perfumes, in fact, rarely come from the flowers whose names they bear. +The artist who dared to borrow nature's elements would only produce a +bastard work which would have neither authenticity nor style, inasmuch +as the essence obtained by the distillation of flowers would bear but +a distant and vulgar relation to the odor of the living flower, +wafting its fragrance into the air. + +Thus, with the exception of the inimitable jasmine which it is +impossible to counterfeit, all flowers are perfectly represented by +the blend of aromatic spirits, stealing the very personality of the +model, and to it adding that nuance the more, that heady scent, that +rare touch which entitled a thing to be called a work of art. + +To resume, in the science of perfumery, the artist develops the +natural odor of the flowers, working over his subject like a jeweler +refining the lustre of a gem and making it precious. + +Little by little, the arcana of this art, most neglected of all, was +revealed to Des Esseintes who could now read this language, as +diversified and insinuating as that of literature, this style with its +unexpected concision under its vague flowing appearance. + +To achieve this end he had first been compelled to master the grammar +and understand the syntax of odors, learning the secret of the rules +that regulate them, and, once familiarized with the dialect, he +compared the works of the masters, of the Atkinsons and Lubins, the +Chardins and Violets, the Legrands and Piesses; then he separated the +construction of their phrases, weighed the value of their words and +the arrangement of their periods. + +Later on, in this idiom of fluids, experience was able to support +theories too often incomplete and banal. + +Classic perfumery, in fact, was scarcely diversified, almost colorless +and uniformly issuing from the mold cast by the ancient chemists. It +was in its dotage, confined to its old alambics, when the romantic +period was born and had modified the old style, rejuvenating it, +making it more supple and malleable. + +Step by step, its history followed that of our language. The perfumed +Louis XIII style, composed of elements highly prized at that time, of +iris powder, musk, chive and myrtle water already designated under the +name of "water of the angels," was hardly sufficient to express the +cavalier graces, the rather crude tones of the period which certain +sonnets of Saint-Amand have preserved for us. Later, with myrrh and +olibanum, the mystic odors, austere and powerful, the pompous gesture +of the great period, the redundant artifices of oratorial art, the +full, sustained harmonious style of Bossuet and the masters of the +pulpit were almost possible. Still later, the sophisticated, rather +bored graces of French society under Louis XV, more easily found their +interpretation in the almond which in a manner summed up this epoch; +then, after the ennui and jadedness of the first empire, which misused +Eau de Cologne and rosemary, perfumery rushed, in the wake of Victor +Hugo and Gautier, towards the Levant. It created oriental +combinations, vivid Eastern nosegays, discovered new intonations, +antitheses which until then had been unattempted, selected and made +use of antique nuances which it complicated, refined and assorted. It +resolutely rejected that voluntary decrepitude to which it had been +reduced by the Malesherbes, the Boileaus, the Andrieuxes and the +Baour-Lormians, wretched distillers of their own poems. + +But this language had not remained stationery since the period of +1830. It had continued to evolve and, patterning itself on the +progress of the century, had advanced parallel with the other arts. +It, too, had yielded to the desires of amateurs and artists, receiving +its inspiration from the Chinese and Japanese, conceiving fragrant +albums, imitating the _Takeoka_ bouquets of flowers, obtaining the +odor of _Rondeletia_ from the blend of lavender and clove; the +peculiar aroma of Chinese ink from the marriage of patchouli and +camphor; the emanation of Japanese _Hovenia_ by compounds of citron, +clove and neroli. + +Des Esseintes studied and analyzed the essences of these fluids, +experimenting to corroborate their texts. He took pleasure in playing +the role of a psychologist for his personal satisfaction, in taking +apart and re-assembling the machinery of a work, in separating the +pieces forming the structure of a compound exhalation, and his sense +of smell had thereby attained a sureness that was all but perfect. + +Just as a wine merchant has only to smell a drop of wine to recognize +the grape, as a hop dealer determines the exact value of hops by +sniffing a bag, as a Chinese trader can immediately tell the origin of +the teas he smells, knowing in what farms of what mountains, in what +Buddhistic convents it was cultivated, the very time when its leaves +were gathered, the state and the degree of torrefaction, the effect +upon it of its proximity to the plum-tree and other flowers, to all +those perfumes which change its essence, adding to it an unexpected +touch and introducing into its dryish flavor a hint of distant fresh +flowers; just so could Des Esseintes, by inhaling a dash of perfume, +instantly explain its mixture and the psychology of its blend, and +could almost give the name of the artist who had composed and given it +the personal mark of his individual style. + +Naturally he had a collection of all the products used by perfumers. +He even had the real Mecca balm, that rare balm cultivated only in +certain parts of Arabia Petraea and under the monopoly of the ruler. + +Now, seated in his dressing room in front of his table, he thought of +creating a new bouquet; and he was overcome by that moment of wavering +confidence familiar to writers when, after months of inaction, they +prepare for a new work. + +Like Balzac who was wont to scribble on many sheets of paper so as to +put himself in a mood for work, Des Esseintes felt the necessity of +steadying his hand by several initial and unimportant experiments. +Desiring to create heliotrope, he took down bottles of vanilla and +almond, then changed his idea and decided to experiment with sweet +peas. + +He groped for a long time, unable to effect the proper combinations, +for orange is dominant in the fragrance of this flower. He attempted +several combinations and ended in achieving the exact blend by joining +tuberose and rose to orange, the whole united by a drop of vanilla. + +His hesitation disappeared. He felt alert and ready for work; now he +made some tea by blending cassie with iris, then, sure of his +technique, he decided to proceed with a fulminating phrase whose +thunderous roar would annihilate the insidious odor of almond still +hovering over his room. + +He worked with amber and with Tonkin musk, marvelously powerful; with +patchouli, the most poignant of vegetable perfumes whose flower, in +its habitat, wafts an odor of mildew. Try what he would, the +eighteenth century obsessed him; the panier robes and furbelows +appeared before his eyes; memories of Boucher's _Venus_ haunted him; +recollections of Themidor's romance, of the exquisite Rosette pursued +him. Furious, he rose and to rid himself of the obsession, with all +his strength he inhaled that pure essence of spikenard, so dear to +Orientals and so repulsive to Europeans because of its pronounced odor +of valerian. He was stunned by the violence of the shock. As though +pounded by hammer strokes, the filigranes of the delicate odor +disappeared; he profited by the period of respite to escape the dead +centuries, the antiquated fumes, and to enter, as he formerly had +done, less limited or more recent works. + +He had of old loved to lull himself with perfumes. He used effects +analogous to those of the poets, and employed the admirable order of +certain pieces of Baudelaire, such as _Irreparable_ and _le Balcon_, +where the last of the five lines composing the strophe is the echo of +the first verse and returns, like a refrain, to steep the soul in +infinite depths of melancholy and languor. + +He strayed into reveries evoked by those aromatic stanzas, suddenly +brought to his point of departure, to the motive of his meditation, by +the return of the initial theme, reappearing, at stated intervals, in +the fragrant orchestration of the poem. + +He actually wished to saunter through an astonishing, diversified +landscape, and he began with a sonorous, ample phrase that suddenly +opened a long vista of fields for him. + +With his vaporizers, he injected an essence formed of ambrosia, +lavender and sweet peas into this room; this formed an essence which, +when distilled by an artist, deserves the name by which it is known: +"extract of wild grass"; into this he introduced an exact blend of +tuberose, orange flower and almond, and forthwith artificial lilacs +sprang into being, while the linden-trees rustled, their thin +emanations, imitated by extract of London tilia, drooping earthward. + +Into this _decor_, arranged with a few broad lines, receding as far as +the eye could reach, under his closed lids, he introduced a light rain +of human and half feline essences, possessing the aroma of petticoats, +breathing of the powdered, painted woman, the stephanotis, ayapana, +opopanax, champaka, sarcanthus and cypress wine, to which he added a +dash of syringa, in order to give to the artificial life of paints +which they exhaled, a suggestion of natural dewy laughter and +pleasures enjoyed in the open air. + +Then, through a ventilator, he permitted these fragrant waves to +escape, only preserving the field which he renewed, compelling it to +return in his strophes like a ritornello. + +The women had gradually disappeared. Now the plain had grown solitary. +Suddenly, on the enchanted horizon, factories appeared whose tall +chimneys flared like bowls of punch. + +The odor of factories and of chemical products now passed with the +breeze which was simulated by means of fans; nature exhaled its sweet +effluvia amid this putrescence. + +Des Esseintes warmed a pellet of storax, and a singular odor, at once +repugnant and exquisite, pervaded the room. It partook of the +delicious fragrance of jonquil and of the stench of gutta percha and +coal oil. He disinfected his hands, inserted his resin in a +hermetically sealed box, and the factories disappeared. + +Then, among the revived vapors of the lindens and meadow grass, he +threw several drops of new mown hay, and, amid this magic site for the +moment despoiled of its lilacs, sheaves of hay were piled up, +introducing a new season and scattering their fine effluence into +these summer odors. + +At last, when he had sufficiently enjoyed this sight, he suddenly +scattered the exotic perfumes, emptied his vaporizers, threw in his +concentrated spirits, poured his balms, and, in the exasperated and +stifling heat of the room there rose a crazy sublimated nature, a +paradoxical nature which was neither genuine nor charming, reuniting +the tropical spices and the peppery breath of Chinese sandal wood and +Jamaica hediosmia with the French odors of jasmine, hawthorn and +verbena. Regardless of seasons and climates he forced trees of diverse +essences into life, and flowers with conflicting fragrances and +colors. By the clash of these tones he created a general, nondescript, +unexpected, strange perfume in which reappeared, like an obstinate +refrain, the decorative phrase of the beginning, the odor of the +meadows fanned by the lilacs and lindens. + +Suddenly a poignant pain seized him; he felt as though wimbles were +drilling into his temples. Opening his eyes he found himself in his +dressing room, seated in front of his table. Stupefied, he painfully +walked across the room to the window which he half opened. A puff of +wind dispelled the stifling atmosphere which was enveloping him. To +exercise his limbs, he walked up and down gazing at the ceiling where +crabs and sea-wrack stood out in relief against a background as light +in color as the sands of the seashore. A similar _decor_ covered the +plinths and bordered the partitions which were covered with Japanese +sea-green crepe, slightly wrinkled, imitating a river rippled by the +wind. In this light current swam a rose petal, around which circled a +school of tiny fish painted with two strokes of the brush. + +But his eyelids remained heavy. He ceased to pace about the short +space between the baptistery and the bath; he leaned against the +window. His dizziness ended. He carefully stopped up the vials, and +used the occasion to arrange his cosmetics. Since his arrival at +Fontenay he had not touched them; and now was quite astonished to +behold once more this collection formerly visited by so many women. +The flasks and jars were lying heaped up against each other. Here, a +porcelain box contained a marvelous white cream which, when applied on +the cheeks, turns to a tender rose color, under the action of the +air--to such a true flesh-color that it procures the very illusion of +a skin touched with blood; there, lacquer objects incrusted with +mother of pearl enclosed Japanese gold and Athenian green, the color +of the cantharis wing, gold and green which change to deep purple when +wetted; there were jars filled with filbert paste, the serkis of the +harem, emulsions of lilies, lotions of strawberry water and elders for +the complexion, and tiny bottles filled with solutions of Chinese ink +and rose water for the eyes. There were tweezers, scissors, rouge and +powder-puffs, files and beauty patches. + +He handled this collection, formerly bought to please a mistress who +swooned under the influence of certain aromatics and balms,--a +nervous, unbalanced woman who loved to steep the nipples of her +breasts in perfumes, but who never really experienced a delicious and +overwhelming ecstacy save when her head was scraped with a comb or +when she could inhale, amid caresses, the odor of perspiration, or the +plaster of unfinished houses on rainy days, or of dust splashed by +huge drops of rain during summer storms. + +He mused over these memories, and one afternoon spent at Pantin +through idleness and curiosity, in company with this woman at the home +of one of her sisters, returned to him, stirring in him a forgotten +world of old ideas and perfumes; while the two women prattled and +displayed their gowns, he had drawn near the window and had seen, +through the dusty panes, the muddy street sprawling before him, and +had heard the repeated sounds of galoches over the puddles of the +pavement. + +This scene, already far removed, came to him suddenly, strangely and +vividly. Pantin was there before him, animated and throbbing in this +greenish and dull mirror into which his unseeing eyes plunged. A +hallucination transported him far from Fontenay. Beside reflecting the +street, the mirror brought back thoughts it had once been instrumental +in evoking, and plunged in revery, he repeated to himself this +ingenious, sad and comforting composition he had formerly written upon +returning to Paris: + +"Yes, the season of downpours is come. Now behold water-spouts +vomiting as they rush over the pavements, and rubbish marinates in +puddles that fill the holes scooped out of the macadam. + +"Under a lowering sky, in the damp air, the walls of houses have black +perspiration and their air-holes are fetid; the loathsomeness of +existence increases and melancholy overwhelms one; the seeds of +vileness which each person harbors in his soul, sprout. The craving +for vile debaucheries seizes austere people and base desires grow +rampant in the brains of respectable men. + +"And yet I warm myself, here before a cheerful fire. From a basket of +blossoming flowers comes the aroma of balsamic benzoin, geranium and +the whorl-flowered bent-grass which permeates the room. In the very +month of November, at Pantin, in the rue de Paris, springtime +persists. Here in my solitude I laugh at the fears of families which, +to shun the approaching cold weather, escape on every steamer to +Cannes and to other winter resorts. + +"Inclement nature does nothing to contribute to this extraordinary +phenomenon. It must be said that his artificial season at Pantin is +the result of man's ingenuity. + +"In fact, these flowers are made of taffeta and are mounted on wire. +The springtime odor filters through the window joints, exhaled from +the neighboring factories, from the perfumeries of Pinaud and Saint +James. + +"For the workmen exhausted by the hard labors of the plants, for the +young employes who too often are fathers, the illusion of a little +healthy air is possible, thanks to these manufacturers. + +"So, from this fabulous subterfuge of a country can an intelligent +cure arise. The consumptive men about town who are sent to the South +die, their end due to the change in their habits and to the nostalgia +for the Parisian excesses which destroyed them. Here, under an +artificial climate, libertine memories will reappear, the languishing +feminine emanations evaporated by the factories. Instead of the deadly +ennui of provincial life, the doctor can thus platonically substitute +for his patient the atmosphere of the Parisian women and of boudoirs. +Most often, all that is necessary to effect the cure is for the +subject to have a somewhat fertile imagination. + +"Since, nowadays, nothing genuine exists, since the wine one drinks +and the liberty one boldly proclaims are laughable and a sham, since +it really needs a healthy dose of good will to believe that the +governing classes are respectable and that the lower classes are +worthy of being assisted or pitied, it seems to me," concluded Des +Esseintes, "to be neither ridiculous nor senseless, to ask of my +fellow men a quantity of illusion barely equivalent to what they spend +daily in idiotic ends, so as to be able to convince themselves that +the town of Pantin is an artificial Nice or a Menton. + +"But all this does not prevent me from seeing," he said, forced by +weakness from his meditations, "that I must be careful to mistrust +these delicious and abominable practices which may ruin my +constitution." He sighed. "Well, well, more pleasures to moderate, +more precautions to be taken." + +And he passed into his study, hoping the more easily to escape the +spell of these perfumes. + +He opened the window wide, glad to be able to breath the air. But it +suddenly seemed to him that the breeze brought in a vague tide of +bergamot with which jasmine and rose water were blent. Agitated, he +asked himself whether he was not really under the yoke of one of those +possessions exercised in the Middle Ages. The odor changed and was +transformed, but it persisted. A faint scent of tincture of tolu, of +balm of Peru and of saffron, united by several drams of amber and +musk, now issued from the sleeping village and suddenly, the +metamorphosis was effected, those scattered elements were blent, and +once more the frangipane spread from the valley of Fontenay as far as +the fort, assailing his exhausted nostrils, once more shattering his +helpless nerves and throwing him into such a prostration that he fell +unconscious on the window sill. + + + + + Chapter 11 + + +The servants were seized with alarm and lost no time in calling the +Fontenay physician who was completely at sea about Des Esseintes' +condition. He mumbled a few medical terms, felt his pulse, examined +the invalid's tongue, unsuccessfully sought to make him speak, +prescribed sedatives and rest, promised to return on the morrow and, +at the negative sign made by Des Esseintes who recovered enough +strength to chide the zeal of his servants and to bid farewell to this +intruder, he departed and was soon retailing through the village the +eccentricities of this house whose decorations had positively amazed +him and held him rooted to the spot. + +To the great astonishment of the domestics, who no longer dared stir +from the servants' quarters, their master recovered in a few days, and +they surprised him drumming against the window panes, gazing at the +sky with a troubled look. + +One afternoon the bells were peremptorily rung and Des Esseintes +commanded his trunks to be packed for a long voyage. + +While the man and the woman were choosing, under his guidance, the +necessary equipment, he feverishly paced up and down the cabin of the +dining room, consulted the timetables of the steamers, walked through +his study where he continued to gaze at the clouds with an air at once +impatient and satisfied. + +For a whole week, the weather had been atrocious. Streams of soot +raced unceasing across the grey fields of the sky-masses of clouds +like rocks torn from the earth. + +At intervals, showers swept downward, engulfing the valley with +torrents of rain. + +Today, the appearance of the heavens had changed. The rivers of ink +had evaporated and vanished, and the harsh contours of the clouds had +softened. The sky was uniformly flat and covered with a brackish film. +Little by little, this film seemed to drop, and a watery haze covered +the country side. The rain no longer fell in cataracts as on the +preceding evening; instead, it fell incessantly, fine, sharp and +penetrating; it inundated the walks, covered the roads with its +innumerable threads which joined heaven and earth. The livid sky threw +a wan leaden light on the village which was now transformed into a +lake of mud pricked by needles of water that dotted the puddles with +drops of bright silver. In this desolation of nature, everything was +gray, and only the housetops gleamed against the dead tones of the +walls. + +"What weather!" sighed the aged domestic, placing on a chair the +clothes which his master had requested of him--an outfit formerly +ordered from London. + +Des Esseintes' sole response was to rub his hands and to sit down in +front of a book-case with glass doors. He examined the socks which had +been placed nearby for his inspection. For a moment he hesitated on +the color; then he quickly studied the melancholy day and earnestly +bethought himself of the effect he desired. He chose a pair the color +of feuillemort, quickly slipped them on, put on a pair of buttoned +shoes, donned the mouse grey suit which was checquered with a lava +gray and dotted with black, placed a small hunting cap on his head and +threw a blue raincoat over him. He reached the railway station, +followed by the servant who almost bent under the weight of a trunk, a +valise, a carpet bag, a hat box and a traveling rug containing +umbrellas and canes. He informed his servant that the date of his +return was problematical, that he might return in a year, in a month, +in a week, or even sooner, and enjoined him to change nothing in the +house. He gave a sum of money which he thought would be necessary for +the upkeep of the house during his absence, and climbed into the +coach, leaving the old man astounded, arms waving and mouth gaping, +behind the rail, while the train got under way. + +He was alone in his compartment; a vague and dirty country side, such +as one sees through an aquarium of troubled water, receded rapidly +behind the train which was lashed by the rain. Plunged in his +meditations, Des Esseintes closed his eyes. + +Once more, this so ardently desired and finally attained solitude had +ended in a fearful distress. This silence which formerly would have +appeared as a compensation for the stupidities heard for years, now +weighed on him with an unendurable burden. One morning he had +awakened, as uneasy as a prisoner in his cell; his lips had sought to +articulate sounds, tears had welled to his eyes and he had found it +impossible to breathe, suffocating like a person who had sobbed for +hours. + +Seized with a desire to walk, to behold a human figure, to speak to +someone, to mingle with life, he had proceeded to call his domestics, +employing a specious pretext; but conversation with them was +impossible. Besides the fact that these old people, bowed down by +years of silence and the customs of attendants, were almost dumb, the +distance at which Des Esseintes had always kept them was hardly +conducive to inducing them to open their mouths now. Too, they +possessed dull brains and were incapable of answering his questions +other than by monosyllables. + +It was impossible, therefore, to find any solace in their society; but +a new phenomenon now occurred. The reading of the novels of Dickens, +which he had lately undertaken to soothe his nerves and which had only +produced effects the opposite of those hoped for, began slowly to act +in an unexpected manner, bringing on visions of English existence on +which he mused for hours; little by little, in these fictive +contemplations, ideas insinuated themselves, ideas of the voyage +brought to an end, of verified dreams on which was imposed the desire +to experience new impressions, and thus escape the exhausting cerebral +debauches intent upon beating in the void. + +With its mist and rain, this abominable weather aided his thoughts +still more, by reinforcing the memories of his readings, by placing +under his eyes the unfading image of a land of fog and mud, and by +refusing to let his ideas wander idly. + +One day, able to endure it no longer, he had instantly decided. Such +was his haste that he even took flight before the designated time, for +he wished to shun the present moment, wished to find himself jostled +and shouldered in the hubbub of crowded streets and railway stations. + +"I breathe!" he exclaimed when the train moderated its waltz and +stopped in the Sceaux station rotunda, panting while its wheels +performed its last pirouettes. + +Once in the boulevard d'Enfer, he hailed a coachman. In some strange +manner he extracted a pleasure from the fact that he was so hampered +with trunks and rugs. By promising a substantial tip, he reached an +understanding with the man of the brown trousers and red waistcoat. + +"At once!" he commanded. "And when you reach the rue de Rivoli, stop +in front of _Galignani's Messenger_." Before departing, he desired to +buy a Baedeker or Murray guide of London. + +The carriage got under way heavily, raising rings of mud around its +wheels and moving through marsh-like ground. Beneath the gray sky +which seemed suspended over the house tops, water gushed down the +thick sides of the high walls, spouts overflowed, and the streets were +coated with a slimy dirt in which passersby slipped. Thickset men +paused on sidewalks bespattered by passing omnibuses, and women, their +skirts tucked up to the knees, bent under umbrellas, flattened +themselves against the shops to avoid being splashed. + +The rain entered diagonally through the carriage doors. Des Esseintes +was obliged to lift the carriage windows down which the water ran, +while drops of mud furrowed their way like fireworks on each side of +the _fiacre_. To the monotonous sound of sacks of peas shaking against +his head through the action of the showers pattering against the +trunks and on the carriage rug, Des Esseintes dreamed of his voyage. +This already was a partial realization of his England, enjoyed in +Paris through the means of this frightful weather: a rainy, colossal +London smelling of molten metal and of soot, ceaselessly steaming and +smoking in the fog now spread out before his eyes; then rows of docks +sprawled ahead, as far as the eye could reach, docks full of cranes, +hand winches and bales, swarming with men perched on masts or astride +yard sails, while myriads of other men on the quays pushed hogsheads +into cellars. + +All this was transpiring in vast warehouses along the river banks +which were bathed by the muddy and dull water of an imaginary Thames, +in a forest of masts and girders piercing the wan clouds of the +firmament, while trains rushed past at full speed or rumpled +underground uttering horrible cries and vomiting waves of smoke, and +while, through every street, monstrous and gaudy and infamous +advertisements flared through the eternal twilight, and strings of +carriages passed between rows of preoccupied and taciturn people whose +eyes stared ahead and whose elbows pressed closely against their +bodies. + +Des Esseintes shivered deliciously to feel himself mingling in this +terrible world of merchants, in this insulating mist, in this +incessant activity, in this pitiless gearing which ground millions of +the disinherited, urged by the comfort-distilling philanthropists to +recite Biblical verses and to sing psalms. + +Then the vision faded suddenly with a jolt of the _fiacre_ which made +him rebound in his seat. He gazed through the carriage windows. Night +had fallen; gas burners blinked through the fog, amid a yellowish +halo; ribbons of fire swam in puddles of water and seemed to revolve +around wheels of carriages moving through liquid and dirty flame. He +endeavored to get his bearings, perceived the Carrousel and suddenly, +unreasoningly, perhaps through the simple effect of the high fall from +fanciful spaces, his thought reverted to a very trivial incident. He +remembered that his domestic had neglected to put a tooth brush in his +belongings. Then, he passed in review the list of objects packed up; +everything had been placed in his valise, but the annoyance of having +omitted this brush persisted until the driver, pulling up, broke the +chain of his reminiscences and regrets. + +He was in the rue de Rivoli, in front of _Galignani's Messenger_. +Separated by a door whose unpolished glass was covered with +inscriptions and with strips of passe-partout framing newspaper +clippings and telegrams, were two vast shop windows crammed with +albums and books. He drew near, attracted by the sight of these books +bound in parrot-blue and cabbage-green paper, embossed with silver and +golden letterings. All this had an anti-Parisian touch, a mercantile +appearance, more brutal and yet less wretched than those worthless +bindings of French books; here and there, in the midst of the opened +albums, reproducing humorous scenes from Du Maurier and John Leech, or +the delirious cavalcades of Caldecott, some French novels appeared, +blending placid and satisfied vulgarities to these rich verjuice hues. +He tore himself away from his contemplation, opened the door and +entered a large library which was full of people. Seated strangers +unfolded maps and jabbered in strange languages. A clerk brought him a +complete collection of guides. He, in turns, sat down to examine the +books with their flexible covers. He glanced through them and paused +at a page of the Baedeker describing the London museums. He became +interested in the laconic and exact details of the guide books, but +his attention wandered away from the old English paintings to the +moderns which attracted him much more. He recalled certain works he +had seen at international expositions, and imagined that he might +possibly behold them once more at London: pictures by Millais--the +_Eve of Saint Agnes_ with its lunar clear green; pictures by Watts, +strange in color, checquered with gamboge and indigo, pictures +sketched by a sick Gustave Moreau, painted by an anaemic Michael +Angelo and retouched by a Raphael submerged in blue. Among other +canvasses, he recalled a _Denunciation of Cain_, an _Ida_, some _Eves_ +where, in the strange and mysterious mixture of these three masters, +rose the personality, at once refined and crude, of a learned and +dreamy Englishman tormented by the bewitchment of cruel tones. + +These canvasses thronged through his memory. The clerk, astonished by +this client who was so lost to the world, asked him which of the +guides he would take. Des Esseintes remained dumbfounded, then excused +himself, bought a Baedeker and departed. The dampness froze him to the +spot; the wind blew from the side, lashing the arcades with whips of +rain. "Proceed to that place," he said to the driver, pointing with +his finger to the end of a passage where a store formed the angle of +the rue de Rivoli and the rue Castiglione and, with its whitish panes +of glass illumed from within, resembled a vast night lamp burning +through the wretchedness of this mist, in the misery of this crazy +weather. + +It was the _Bodega_. Des Esseintes strayed into a large room sustained +by iron pillars and lined, on each side of its walls, with tall +barrels placed on their ends upon gantries, hooped with iron, their +paunches with wooden loopholes imitating a rack of pipes and from +whose notches hung tulip-shaped glasses, upside down. The lower sides +were bored and hafted with stone cocks. These hogsheads painted with a +royal coat of arms displayed the names of their drinks, the contents, +and the prices on colored labels and stated that they were to be +purchased by the cask, by the bottle or by the glass. + +In the passage between these rows of casks, under the gas jets which +flared at one end of an ugly iron-gray chandelier, tables covered with +baskets of Palmers biscuits, hard and salty cakes, plates piled with +mince pies and sandwiches concealing strong, mustardy concoctions +under their unsavory covers, succeeded each other between a row of +seats and as far as the end of this cellar which was lined with still +more hogsheads carrying tiny barrels on their tops, resting on their +sides and bearing their names stamped with hot metal into the oak. + +An odor of alcohol assailed Des Esseintes upon taking a seat in this +room heavy with strong wines. He looked about him. Here, the tuns were +placed in a straight line, exhibiting the whole series of ports, the +sweet or sour wines the color of mahogany or amaranth, and +distinguished by such laudatory epithets as _old port_, _light +delicate_, _Cockburn's very fine_, _magnificent old Regina_. There, +protruding formidable abdomens pressed closely against each other, +huge casks contained the martial Spanish wines, sherry and its +derivatives, the _san lucar_, _pasto_, _pale dry_, _oloroso_ and +_amontilla_. + +The cellar was filled with people. Leaning on his elbows on a corner +of the table, Des Esseintes sat waiting for his glass of port ordered +of a gentleman who was opening explosive sodas contained in oval +bottles which recalled, while exaggerating, the capsules of gelatine +and gluten used by pharmacies to conceal the taste of certain +medicines. + +Englishmen were everywhere,--awkward pale clergymen garbed in black +from head to foot, with soft hats, laced shoes, very long coats dotted +in the front with tiny buttons, clean-shaved chins, round spectacles, +greasy flat hair; faces of tripe dealers and mastiff snouts with +apoplectic necks, ears like tomatoes, vinous cheeks, blood-shot crazy +eyes, whiskers that looked like those of some big monkeys; farther +away, at the end of the wine store, a long row of tow-headed +individuals, their chins covered with white hair like the end of an +artichoke, reading, through a microscope, the tiny roman type of an +English newspaper; opposite him, a sort of American commodore, dumpy +and thick-set, with smoked skin and bulbous nose, was sleeping, a +cigar planted in the hairy aperture of his mouth. Opposite were frames +hanging on the wall enclosing advertisements of Champagne, the trade +marks of Perrier and Roederer, Heidsieck and Mumm, and a hooded head +of a monk, with the name of Dom Perignon, Rheims, written in Gothic +characters. + +A certain enervation enveloped Des Esseintes in this guard house +atmosphere; stunned by the prattle of the Englishmen conversing among +themselves, he fell into a revery, evoking, before the purple port +which filled the glasses, the creatures of Dickens that love this +drink so very much, imaginatively peopling the cellar with new +personages, seeing here, the white head of hair and the ruddy +complexion of Mr. Wickfield; there, the phlegmatic, crafty face and +the vengeful eye of Mr. Tulkinghorn, the melancholy solicitor in +_Bleak House_. Positively, all of them broke away from his memory and +installed themselves in the _Bodega_, with their peculiar +characteristics and their betraying gestures. His memories, brought to +life by his recent readings, attained a startling precision. The city +of the romancer, the house illumined and warmed, so perfectly tended +and isolated, the bottles poured slowly by little Dorrit and Dora +Copperfield and Tom Pinch's sister, appeared to him sailing like an +ark in a deluge of mire and soot. Idly he wandered through this +imaginary London, happy to be sheltered, as he listened to the +sinister shrieks of tugs plying up and down the Thames. His glass was +empty. Despite the heavy fumes in this cellar, caused by the cigars +and pipes, he experienced a cold shiver when he returned to the +reality of the damp and fetid weather. + +He called for a glass of amontillado, and suddenly, beside this pale, +dry wine, the lenitive, sweetish stories of the English author were +routed, to be replaced by the pitiless revulsives and the grievous +irritants of Edgar Allen Poe; the cold nightmares of _The Cask of +Amontillado_, of the man immured in a vault, assailed him; the +ordinary placid faces of American and English drinkers who occupied +the room, appeared to him to reflect involuntary frightful thoughts, +to be harboring instinctive, odious plots. Then he perceived that he +was left alone here and that the dinner hour was near. He payed his +bill, tore himself from his seat and dizzily gained the door. He +received a wet slap in the face upon leaving the place. The street +lamps moved their tiny fans of flame which failed to illuminate; the +sky had dropped to the very houses. Des Esseintes viewed the arcades +of the rue de Rivoli, drowned in the gloom and submerged by water, and +it seemed to him that he was in the gloomy tunnel under the Thames. +Twitchings of his stomach recalled him to reality. He regained his +carriage, gave the driver the address of the tavern in the rue +d'Amsterdam near the station, and looked at his watch: seven o'clock. +He had just time to eat dinner; the train would not leave until ten +minutes of nine, and he counted on his fingers, reckoning the hours of +travel from Dieppe to Newhaven, saying to himself: "If the figures of +the timetable are correct, I shall be at London tomorrow at +twelve-thirty." + +The _fiacre_ stopped in front of the tavern. Once more, Des Esseintes +alighted and entered a long dark plain room, divided into partitions +as high as a man's waist,--a series of compartments resembling stalls. +In this room, wider towards the door, many beer pumps stood on a +counter, near hams having the color of old violins, red lobsters, +marinated mackerel, with onions and carrots, slices of lemon, bunches +of laurel and thym, juniper berries and long peppers swimming in thick +sauce. + +One of these boxes was unoccupied. He took it and called a young +black-suited man who bent forward, muttering something in a jargon he +could not understand. While the cloth was being laid, Des Esseintes +viewed his neighbors. They were islanders, just as at the _Bodega_, +with cold faience eyes, crimson complexions, thoughtful or haughty +airs. They were reading foreign newspapers. The only ones eating were +unescorted women in pairs, robust English women with boyish faces, +large teeth, ruddy apple cheeks, long hands and legs. They attacked, +with genuine ardor, a rumpsteak pie, a warm meat dish cooked in +mushroom sauce and covered with a crust, like a pie. + +After having lacked appetite for such a long time, he remained amazed +in the presence of these hearty eaters whose voracity whetted his +hunger. He ordered oxtail soup and enjoyed it heartily. Then he +glanced at the menu for the fish, ordered a haddock and, seized with a +sudden pang of hunger at the sight of so many people relishing their +food, he ate some roast beef and drank two pints of ale, stimulated by +the flavor of a cow-shed which this fine, pale beer exhaled. + +His hunger persisted. He lingered over a piece of blue Stilton cheese, +made quick work of a rhubarb tart, and to vary his drinking, quenched +his thirst with porter, that dark beer which smells of Spanish +licorice but which does not have its sugary taste. + +He breathed deeply. Not for years had he eaten and drunk so much. This +change of habit, this choice of unexpected and solid food had awakened +his stomach from its long sleep. He leaned back in his chair, lit a +cigarette and prepared to sip his coffee into which gin had been +poured. + +The rain continued to fall. He heard it patter on the panes which +formed a ceiling at the end of the room; it fell in cascades down the +spouts. No one was stirring in the room. Everybody, utterly weary, was +indulging himself in front of his wine glass. + +Tongues were now wagging freely. As almost all the English men and +women raised their eyes as they spoke, Des Esseintes concluded that +they were talking of the bad weather; not one of them laughed. He +threw a delighted glance on their suits whose color and cut did not +perceivably differ from that of others, and he experienced a sense of +contentment in not being out of tune in this environment, of being, in +some way, though superficially, a naturalized London citizen. Then he +suddenly started. "And what about the train?" he asked himself. He +glanced at his watch: ten minutes to eight. "I still have nearly a +half-hour to remain here." Once more, he began to muse upon the plan +he had conceived. + +In his sedentary life, only two countries had ever attracted him: +Holland and England. + +He had satisfied the first of his desires. Unable to keep away, one +fine day he had left Paris and visited the towns of the Low Lands, one +by one. + +In short, nothing but cruel disillusions had resulted from this trip. +He had fancied a Holland after the works of Teniers and Steen, of +Rembrandt and Ostade, in his usual way imagining rich, unique and +incomparable Ghettos, had thought of amazing kermesses, continual +debauches in the country sides, intent for a view of that patriarchal +simplicity, that jovial lusty spirit celebrated by the old masters. + +Certainly, Haarlem and Amsterdam had enraptured him. The unwashed +people, seen in their country farms, really resembled those types +painted by Van Ostade, with their uncouth children and their old fat +women, embossed with huge breasts and enormous bellies. But of the +unrestrained joys, the drunken family carousals, not a whit. He had to +admit that the Dutch paintings at the Louvre had misled him. They had +simply served as a springing board for his dreams. He had rushed +forward on a false track and had wandered into capricious visions, +unable to discover in the land itself, anything of that real and +magical country which he had hoped to behold, seeing nothing at all, +on the plots of ground strewn with barrels, of the dances of +petticoated and stockinged peasants crying for very joy, stamping +their feet out of sheer happiness and laughing loudly. + +Decidedly nothing of all this was visible. Holland was a country just +like any other country, and what was more, a country in no wise +primitive, not at all simple, for the Protestant religion with its +formal hypocricies and solemn rigidness held sway here. + +The memory of that disenchantment returned to him. Once more he +glanced at his watch: ten minutes still separated him from the train's +departure. "It is about time to ask for the bill and leave," he told +himself. + +He felt an extreme heaviness in his stomach and through his body. +"Come!" he addressed himself, "let us drink and screw up our courage." +He filled a glass of brandy, while asking for the reckoning. An +individual in black suit and with a napkin under one arm, a sort of +majordomo with a bald and sharp head, a greying beard without +moustaches, came forward. A pencil rested behind his ear and he +assumed an attitude like a singer, one foot in front of the other; he +drew a note book from his pocket, and without glancing at his paper, +his eyes fixed on the ceiling, near a chandelier, wrote while +counting. "There you are!" he said, tearing the sheet from his note +book and giving it to Des Esseintes who looked at him with curiosity, +as though he were a rare animal. What a surprising John Bull, he +thought, contemplating this phlegmatic person who had, because of his +shaved mouth, the appearance of a wheelsman of an American ship. + +At this moment, the tavern door opened. Several persons entered +bringing with them an odor of wet dog to which was blent the smell of +coal wafted by the wind through the opened door. Des Esseintes was +incapable of moving a limb. A soft warm languor prevented him from +even stretching out his hand to light a cigar. He told himself: "Come +now, let us get up, we must take ourselves off." Immediate objections +thwarted his orders. What is the use of moving, when one can travel on +a chair so magnificently? Was he not even now in London, whose aromas +and atmosphere and inhabitants, whose food and utensils surrounded +him? For what could he hope, if not new disillusionments, as had +happened to him in Holland? + +He had but sufficient time to race to the station. An overwhelming +aversion for the trip, an imperious need of remaining tranquil, seized +him with a more and more obvious and stubborn strength. Pensively, he +let the minutes pass, thus cutting off all retreat, and he said to +himself, "Now it would be necessary to rush to the gate and crowd into +the baggage room! What ennui! What a bore that would be!" Then he +repeated to himself once more, "In fine, I have experienced and seen +all I wished to experience and see. I have been filled with English +life since my departure. I would be mad indeed to go and, by an +awkward trip, lose those imperishable sensations. How stupid of me to +have sought to disown my old ideas, to have doubted the efficacy of +the docile phantasmagories of my brain, like a very fool to have +thought of the necessity, of the curiosity, of the interest of an +excursion!" + +"Well!" he exclaimed, consulting his watch, "it is now time to return +home." + +This time, he arose and left, ordered the driver to bring him back to +the Sceaux station, and returned with his trunks, packages, valises, +rugs, umbrellas and canes, to Fontenay, feeling the physical +stimulation and the moral fatigue of a man coming back to his home +after a long and dangerous voyage. + + + + + Chapter 12 + + +During the days following his return, Des Esseintes contemplated his +books and experienced, at the thought that he might have been +separated from them for a long period, a satisfaction as complete as +that which comes after a protracted absence. Under the touch of this +sentiment, these objects possessed a renewed novelty to his mind, and +he perceived in them beauties forgotten since the time he had +purchased them. + +Everything there, books, bric-a-brac and furniture, had an individual +charm for him. His bed seemed the softer by comparison with the hard +bed he would have occupied in London. The silent, discreet +ministrations of his servants charmed him, exhausted as he was at the +thought of the loud loquacity of hotel attendants. The methodical +organization of his life made him feel that it was especially to be +envied since the possibility of traveling had become imminent. + +He steeped himself in this bath of habitude, to which artificial +regrets insinuated a tonic quality. + +But his books chiefly preoccupied him. He examined them, re-arranged +them on the shelves, anxious to learn if the hot weather and the rains +had damaged the bindings and injured the rare paper. + +He began by moving all his Latin books; then he arranged in a new +order the special works of Archelaus, Albert le Grand, Lully and +Arnaud de Villanova treating of cabbala and the occult sciences; +finally he examined his modern books, one by one, and was happy to +perceive that all had remained intact. + +This collection had cost him a considerable sum of money. He would not +suffer, in his library, the books he loved to resemble other similar +volumes, printed on cotton paper with the watermarks of _Auvergne_. + +Formerly in Paris he had ordered made, for himself alone, certain +volumes which specially engaged mechanics printed from hand presses. +Sometimes, he applied to Perrin of Lyons, whose graceful, clear type +was suitable for archaic reprints of old books. At other times he +dispatched orders to England or to America for the execution of modern +literature and the works of the present century. Still again, he +applied to a house in Lille, which for centuries had possessed a +complete set of Gothic characters; he also would send requisitions to +the old Enschede printing house of Haarlem whose foundry still has the +stamps and dies of certain antique letters. + +He had followed the same method in selecting his papers. Finally +growing weary of the snowy Chinese and the nacreous and gilded +Japanese papers, the white Whatmans, the brown Hollands, the +buff-colored Turkeys and Seychal Mills, and equally disgusted with all +mechanically manufactured sheets, he had ordered special laid paper in +the mould, from the old plants of Vire which still employ the pestles +once in use to grind hemp. To introduce a certain variety into his +collection, he had repeatedly brought from London prepared stuffs, +paper interwoven with hairs, and as a mark of his disdain for +bibliophiles, he had a Lubeck merchant prepare for him an improved +candle paper of bottle-blue tint, clear and somewhat brittle, in the +pulp of which the straw was replaced by golden spangles resembling +those which dot Danzig brandy. + +Under these circumstances he had succeeded in procuring unique books, +adopting obsolete formats which he had bound by Lortic, by +Trautz-Bauzonnet or Chambolle, by the successors of Cape, in +irreproachable covers of old silk, stamped cow hide, Cape goat skin, +in full bindings with compartments and in mosaic designs, protected by +tabby or moire watered silk, ecclesiastically ornamented with clasps +and corners, and sometimes even enamelled by Gruel Engelmann with +silver oxide and clear enamels. + +Thus, with the marvelous episcopal lettering used in the old house of +Le Clere, he had Baudelaire's works printed in a large format +recalling that of ancient missals, on a very light and spongy Japan +paper, soft as elder pith and imperceptibly tinted with a light rose +hue through its milky white. This edition, limited to one copy, +printed with a velvety black Chinese ink, had been covered outside and +then recovered within with a wonderful genuine sow skin, chosen among +a thousand, the color of flesh, its surface spotted where the hairs +had been and adorned with black silk stamped in cold iron in +miraculous designs by a great artist. + +That day, Des Esseintes took this incomparable book from his shelves +and handled it devotedly, once more reading certain pieces which +seemed to him, in this simple but inestimable frame, more than +ordinarily penetrating. + +His admiration for this writer was unqualified. According to him, +until Baudelaire's advent in literature, writers had limited +themselves to exploring the surfaces of the soul or to penetrating +into the accessible and illuminated caverns, restoring here and there +the layers of capital sins, studying their veins, their growths, and +noting, like Balzac for example, the layers of strata in the soul +possessed by the monomania of a passion, by ambition, by avarice, by +paternal stupidity, or by senile love. + +What had been treated heretofore was the abundant health of virtues +and of vices, the tranquil functioning of commonplace brains, and the +practical reality of contemporary ideas, without any ideal of sickly +depravation or of any beyond. In short, the discoveries of those +analysts had stopped at the speculations of good or evil classified by +the Church. It was the simple investigation, the conventional +examination of a botanist minutely observing the anticipated +development of normal efflorescence abounding in the natural earth. + +Baudelaire had gone farther. He had descended to the very bowels of +the inexhaustible mine, had involved his mind in abandoned and +unfamiliar levels, and come to those districts of the soul where +monstrous vegetations of thought extend their branches. + +There, near those confines, the haunt of aberrations and of sickness, +of the mystic lockjaw, the warm fever of lust, and the typhoids and +vomits of crime, he had found, brooding under the gloomy clock of +Ennui, the terrifying spectre of the age of sentiments and ideas. + +He had revealed the morbid psychology of the mind which has attained +the October of its sensations, recounted the symptoms of souls +summoned by grief and licensed by spleen, and shown the increasing +decay of impressions while the enthusiasms and beliefs of youth are +enfeebled and the only thing remaining is the arid memory of miseries +borne, intolerances endured and affronts suffered by intelligences +oppressed by a ridiculous destiny. + +He had pursued all the phases of that lamentable autumn, studying the +human creature, quick to exasperation, ingenious in deceiving himself, +compelling his thoughts to cheat each other so as to suffer the more +keenly, and frustrating in advance all possible joy by his faculty of +analysis and observation. + +Then, in this vexed sensibility of the soul, in this ferocity of +reflection that repels the restless ardor of devotions and the +well-meaning outrages of charity, he gradually saw arising the horror +of those senile passions, those ripe loves, where one person yields +while the other is still suspicious, where lassitude denies such +couples the filial caresses whose apparent youthfulness seems new, and +the maternal candors whose gentleness and comfort impart, in a sense, +the engaging remorse of a vague incest. + +In magnificent pages he exposed his hybrid loves who were exasperated +by the impotence in which they were overwhelmed, the hazardous deceits +of narcotics and poisons invoked to aid in calming suffering and +conquering ennui. At an epoch when literature attributed unhappiness +of life almost exclusively to the mischances of unrequited love or to +the jealousies that attend adulterous love, he disregarded such +puerile maladies and probed into those wounds which are more fatal, +more keen and deep, which arise from satiety, disillusion and scorn in +ruined souls whom the present tortures, the past fills with loathing +and the future frightens and menaces with despair. + +And the more Des Esseintes read Baudelaire, the more he felt the +ineffable charm of this writer who, in an age when verse served only +to portray the external semblance of beings and things, had succeeded +in expressing the inexpressible in a muscular and brawny language; +who, more than any other writer possessed a marvelous power to define +with a strange robustness of expression, the most fugitive and +tentative morbidities of exhausted minds and sad souls. + +After Baudelaire's works, the number of French books given place in +his shelves was strictly limited. He was completely indifferent to +those works which it is fashionable to praise. "The broad laugh of +Rabelais," and "the deep comedy of Moliere," did not succeed in +diverting him, and the antipathy he felt against these farces was so +great that he did not hesitate to liken them, in the point of art, to +the capers of circus clowns. + +As for old poetry, he read hardly anything except Villon, whose +melancholy ballads touched him, and, here and there, certain fragments +from d'Aubigne, which stimulated his blood with the incredible +vehemence of their apostrophes and curses. + +In prose, he cared little for Voltaire and Rousseau, and was unmoved +even by Diderot, whose so greatly praised _Salons_ he found strangely +saturated with moralizing twaddle and futility; in his hatred toward +all this balderdash, he limited himself almost exclusively to the +reading of Christian eloquence, to the books of Bourdaloue and Bossuet +whose sonorously embellished periods were imposing; but, still more, +he relished suggestive ideas condensed into severe and strong phrases, +such as those created by Nicole in his reflections, and especially +Pascal, whose austere pessimism and attrition deeply touched him. + +Apart from such books as these, French literature began in his library +with the nineteenth century. + +This section was divided into two groups, one of which included the +ordinary, secular literature, and the other the Catholic literature, a +special but little known literature published by large publishing +houses and circulated to the four corners of the earth. + +He had had the hardihood to explore such crypts as these, just as in +the secular art he had discovered, under an enormous mass of insipid +writings, a few books written by true masters. + +The distinctive character of this literature was the constant +immutability of its ideas and language. Just as the Church perpetuated +the primitive form of holy objects, so she has preserved the relics of +her dogmas, piously retaining, as the frame that encloses them, the +oratorical language of the celebrated century. As one of the Church's +own writers, Ozanam, has put it, the Christian style needed only to +make use of the dialect employed by Bourdaloue and by Bossuet to the +exclusion of all else. + +In spite of this statement, the Church, more indulgent, closed its +eyes to certain expressions, certain turns of style borrowed from the +secular language of the same century, and the Catholic idiom had +slightly purified itself of its heavy and massive phrases, especially +cleaning itself, in Bossuet, of its prolixity and the painful rallying +of its pronouns; but here ended the concessions, and others would +doubtless have been purposeless for the prose sufficed without this +ballast for the limited range of subjects to which the Church confined +itself. + +Incapable of grappling with contemporary life, of rendering the most +simple aspects of things and persons visible and palpable, unqualified +to explain the complicated wiles of intellects indifferent to the +benefits of salvation, this language was nevertheless excellent when +it treated of abstract subjects. It proved valuable in the argument of +controversy, in the demonstration of a theory, in the obscurity of a +commentary and, more than any other style, had the necessary authority +to affirm, without any discussion, the intent of a doctrine. + +Unfortunately, here as everywhere, the sanctuary had been invaded by a +numerous army of pedants who smirched by their ignorance and lack of +talent the Church's noble and austere attire. Further to profane it, +devout women had interfered, and stupid sacristans and foolish +_salons_ had acclaimed as works of genius the wretched prattle of such +women. + +Among such works, Des Esseintes had had the curiosity to read those of +Madame Swetchine, the Russian, whose house in Paris was the rendezvous +of the most fervent Catholics. Her writings had filled him with +insufferably horrible boredom; they were more than merely wretched: +they were wretched in every way, resembling the echoes of a tiny +chapel where the solemn worshippers mumble their prayers, asking news +of one another in low voices, while they repeat with a deeply +mysterious air the common gossip of politics, weather forecasts and +the state of the weather. + +But there was even worse: a female laureate licensed by the Institute, +Madame Augustus Craven, author of _Recit d'une soeur_, of _Eliane_ and +_Fleaurange_, puffed into reputation by the whole apostolic press. +Never, no, never, had Des Esseintes imagined that any person could +write such ridiculous nonsense. In the point of conception, these +books were so absurd, and were written in such a disgusting style, +that by these tokens they became almost remarkable and rare. + +It was not at all among the works of women that Des Esseintes, whose +soul was completely jaded and whose nature was not inclined to +sentimentality, could come upon a literary retreat suited to his +taste. + +Yet he strove, with a diligence that no impatience could overcome, to +enjoy the works of a certain girl of genius, the blue-stocking pucelle +of the group, but his efforts miscarried. He did not take to the +_Journal_ and the _Lettres_ in which Eugenie de Guerin celebrates, +without discretion, the amazing talent of a brother who rhymed, with +such cleverness and grace that one must go to the works of de Jouy and +Ecouchard Lebrun to find anything so novel and daring. + +He had also unavailingly attempted to comprehend the delights of those +works in which one may find such things as these: + + This morning I hung on papa's bed a cross which a little + girl had given him yesterday. + +Or: + + Mimi and I are invited by Monsieur Roquiers to attend the + consecration of a bell tomorrow. This does not displease + me at all. + +Or wherein we find such important events as these: + + On my neck I have hung a medal of the Holy Virgin which + Louise had brought me, as an amulet against cholera. + +Or poetry of this sort: + + O the lovely moonbeam which fell on the Bible I was reading! + +And, finally, such fine and penetrating observations as these: + + When I see a man pass before a crucifix, lift his hat and + make the sign of the Cross, I say to myself, 'There goes a + Christian.' + +And she continued in this fashion, without pause, until after Maurice +de Guerin had died, after which his sister bewailed him in other +pages, written in a watery prose strewn here and there with bits of +poems whose humiliating poverty ended by moving Des Esseintes to pity. + +Ah! it was hardly worth mentioning, but the Catholic party was not at +all particular in the choice of its proteges and not at all artistic. +Without exception, all these writers wrote in the pallid white prose +of pensioners of a monastery, in a flowing movement of phrase which no +astringent could counterbalance. + +So Des Esseintes, horror-stricken at such insipidities, entirely +forsook this literature. But neither did he find atonement for his +disappointments among the modern masters of the clergy. These latter +were one-sided divines or impeccably correct controversialists, but +the Christian language in their orations and books had ended by +becoming impersonal and congealing into a rhetoric whose every +movement and pause was anticipated, in a sequence of periods +constructed after a single model. And, in fact, Des Esseintes +discovered that all the ecclesiastics wrote in the same manner, with a +little more or a little less abandon or emphasis, and there was seldom +any variations between the bodiless patterns traded by Dupanloup or +Landriot, La Bouillerie or Gaume, by Dom Gueranger or Ratisbonne, by +Freppel or Perraud, by Ravignan or Gratry, by Olivain or Dosithee, by +Didon or Chocarne. + +Des Esseintes had often pondered upon this matter. A really authentic +talent, a supremely profound originality, a well-anchored conviction, +he thought, was needed to animate this formal style which was too +frail to support any thought that was unforseen or any thesis that was +audacious. + +Yet, despite all this, there were several writers whose burning +eloquence fused and shaped this language, notably Lacordaire, who was +one of the few really great writers the Church had produced for many +years. + +Immured, like his colleagues, in the narrow circle of orthodox +speculations, likewise obliged to dissipate his energies in the +exclusive consideration of those theories which had been expressed and +consecrated by the Fathers of the Church and developed by the masters +of the pulpit, he succeeded in inbuing them with novelty and in +rejuvenating, almost in modifying them, by clothing them in a more +personal and stimulating form. Here and there in his _Conferences de +Notre-Dame_, were treasures of expression, audacious usages of words, +accents of love, rapid movements, cries of joy and distracted +effusions. Then, to his position as a brilliant and gentle monk whose +ingenuity and labors had been exhausted in the impossible task of +conciliating the liberal doctrines of society with the authoritarian +dogmas of the Church, he added a temperament of fierce love and suave +diplomatic tenderness. In his letters to young men may be found the +caressing inflections of a father exhorting his sons with smiling +reprimands, the well-meaning advice and the indulgent forgiveness. +Some of these Des Esseintes found charming, confessing as they did the +monk's yearning for affection, while others were even imposing when +they sought to sustain courage and dissipate doubts by the inimitable +certainties of Faith. In fine, this sentiment of paternity, which gave +his pen a delicately feminine quality, lent to his prose a +characteristically individual accent discernible among all the +clerical literature. + +After Lacordaire, ecclesiastics and monks possessing any individuality +were extremely rare. At the very most, a few pages of his pupil, the +Abbe Peyreyve, merited reading. He left sympathetic biographies of his +master, wrote a few loveable letters, composed treatises in the +sonorous language of formal discourse, and delivered panegyrics in +which the declamatory tone was too broadly stressed. Certainly the +Abbe Peyreyve had neither the emotion nor the ardor of Lacordaire. He +was too much a priest and too little a man. Yet, here and there in the +rhetoric of his sermons, flashed interesting effects of large and +solid phrasing or touches of nobility that were almost venerable. + +But to find writers of prose whose works justify close study, one was +obliged to seek those who had not submitted to Ordination; to the +secular writers whom the interests of Catholicism engaged and devoted +to its cause. + +With the Comte de Falloux, the episcopal style, so stupidly handled by +the prelates, recruited new strength and in a manner recovered its +masculine vigor. Under his guise of moderation, this academician +exuded gall. The discourse which he delivered to Parliament in 1848 +was diffuse and abject, but his articles, first printed in the +_Correspondant_ and since collected into books, were mordant and +discerning under the exaggerated politeness of their form. Conceived +as harangues, they contained a certain strong muscular energy and were +astonishing in the intolerance of their convictions. + +A dangerous polemist because of his ambuscades, a shrewd logician, +executing flanking movements and attacking unexpectedly, the Comte de +Falloux had also written striking, penetrating pages on the death of +Madame Swetchine, whose tracts he had collected and whom he revered as +a saint. + +But the true temperament of the writer was betrayed in the two +brochures which appeared in 1848 and 1880, the latter entitled +_l'Unite nationale_. + +Moved by a cold rage, the implacable legitimist this time fought +openly, contrary to his custom, and hurled against the infidels, in +the form of a peroration, such fulminating invectives as these: + +"And you, systematic Utopians, who make an abstraction of human +nature, fomentors of atheism, fed on chimerae and hatreds, +emancipators of woman, destroyers of the family, genealogists of the +simian race, you whose name was but lately an outrage, be satisfied: +you shall have been the prophets, and your disciples will be the +high-priests of an abominable future!" + +The other brochure bore the title _le Parti catholique_ and was +directed against the despotism of the _Univers_ and against Veuillot +whose name he refused to mention. Here the sinuous attacks were +resumed, venom filtered beneath each line, when the gentleman, clad in +blue answered the sharp physical blows of the fighter with scornful +sarcasms. + +These contestants represented the two parties of the Church, the two +factions whose differences were resolved into virulent hatreds. De +Falloux, the more haughty and cunning, belonged to the liberal camp +which already claimed Montalembert and Cochin, Lacordaire and De +Broglie. He subscribed to the principles of the _Correspondant_, a +review which attempted to cover the imperious theories of the Church +with a varnish of tolerance. Veuillot, franker and more open, scorned +such masks, unhesitatingly admitted the tyranny of the ultramontaine +doctrines and confessed, with a certain compunction, the pitiless yoke +of the Church's dogma. + +For the conduct of this verbal warfare, Veuillot had made himself +master of a special style, partly borrowed from La Bruyere and Du +Gros-Caillou. This half-solemn, half-slang style, had the force of a +tomahawk in the hands of this vehement personality. Strangely +headstrong and brave, he had overwhelmed both free thinkers and +bishops with this terrible weapon, charging at his enemies like a +bull, regardless of the party to which they belonged. Distrusted by +the Church, which would tolerate neither his contraband style nor his +fortified theories, he had nevertheless overawed everybody by his +powerful talent, incurring the attack of the entire press which he +effectively thrashed in his _Odeurs de Paris_, coping with every +assault, freeing himself with a kick of the foot of all the wretched +hack-writers who had presumed to attack him. + +Unfortunately, this undisputed talent only existed in pugilism. At +peace, Veuillot was no more than a mediocre writer. His poetry and +novels were pitiful. His language was vapid, when it was not engaged +in a striking controversy. In repose, he changed, uttering banal +litanies and mumbling childish hymns. + +More formal, more constrained and more serious was the beloved +apologist of the Church, Ozanam, the inquisitor of the Christian +language. Although he was very difficult to understand, Des Esseintes +never failed to be astonished by the insouciance of this writer, who +spoke confidently of God's impenetrable designs, although he felt +obliged to establish proof of the improbable assertions he advanced. +With the utmost self-confidence, he deformed events, contradicted, +with greater impudence even than the panegyrists of other parties, the +known facts of history, averred that the Church had never concealed +the esteem it had for science, called heresies impure miasmas, and +treated Buddhism and other religions with such contempt that he +apologized for even soiling his Catholic prose by onslaught on their +doctrines. + +At times, religious passion breathed a certain ardor into his +oratorical language, under the ice of which seethed a violent current; +in his numerous writings on Dante, on Saint Francis, on the author of +_Stabat Mater_, on the Franciscan poets, on socialism, on commercial +law and every imaginable subject, this man pleaded for the defense of +the Vatican which he held indefectible, and judged causes and opinions +according to their harmony or discord with those that he advanced. + +This manner of viewing questions from a single viewpoint was also the +method of that literary scamp, Nettement, whom some people would have +made the other's rival. The latter was less bigoted than the master, +affected less arrogance and admitted more worldly pretentions. He +repeatedly left the literary cloister in which Ozanam had imprisoned +himself, and had read secular works so as to be able to judge of them. +This province he entered gropingly, like a child in a vault, seeing +nothing but shadow around him, perceiving in this gloom only the gleam +of the candle which illumed the place a few paces before him. + +In this gloom, uncertain of his bearings, he stumbled at every turn, +speaking of Murger who had "the care of a chiselled and carefully +finished style"; of Hugo who sought the noisome and unclean and to +whom he dared compare De Laprade; of Paul Delacroix who scorned the +rules; of Paul Delaroche and of the poet Reboul, whom he praised +because of their apparent faith. + +Des Esseintes could not restrain a shrug of the shoulders before these +stupid opinions, covered by a borrowed prose whose already worn +texture clung or became torn at each phrase. + +In a different way, the works of Poujoulat and Genoude, Montalembert, +Nicolas and Carne failed to inspire him with any definite interest. +His taste for history was not pronounced, even when treated with the +scholarly fidelity and harmonious style of the Duc de Broglie, nor was +his penchant for the social and religious questions, even when +broached by Henry Cochin, who revealed his true self in a letter where +he gave a stirring account of the taking of the veil at the +Sacre-Coeur. He had not touched these books for a long time, and the +period was already remote when he had thrown with his waste paper the +puerile lucubrations of the gloomy Pontmartin and the pitiful Feval; +and long since he had given to his servants, for a certain vulgar +usage, the short stories of Aubineau and Lasserre, in which are +recorded wretched hagiographies of miracles effected by Dupont of +Tours and by the Virgin. + +In no way did Des Esseintes derive even a fugitive distraction from +his boredom from this literature. The mass of books which he had once +studied he had thrown into dim corners of his library shelves when he +left the Fathers' school. "I should have left them in Paris," he told +himself, as he turned out some books which were particularly +insufferable: those of the Abbe Lamennais and that impervious +sectarian so magisterially, so pompously dull and empty, the Comte +Joseph de Maistre. + +A single volume remained on a shelf, within reach of his hand. It was +the _Homme_ of Ernest Hello. This writer was the absolute opposite of +his religious confederates. Almost isolated among the pious group +terrified by his conduct, Ernest Hello had ended by abandoning the +open road that led from earth to heaven. Probably disgusted by the +dullness of the journey and the noisy mob of those pilgrims of letters +who for centuries followed one after the other upon the same highway, +marching in each other's steps, stopping at the same places to +exchange the same commonplace remarks on religion, on the Church +Fathers, on their similar beliefs, on their common masters, he had +departed through the byways to wander in the gloomy glade of Pascal, +where he tarried long to recover his breath before continuing on his +way and going even farther in the regions of human thought than the +Jansenist, whom he derided. + +Tortuous and precious, doctoral and complex, Hello, by the piercing +cunning of his analysis, recalled to Des Esseintes the sharp, probing +investigations of some of the infidel psychologists of the preceding +and present century. In him was a sort of Catholic Duranty, but more +dogmatic and penetrating, an experienced manipulation of the +magnifying glass, a sophisticated engineer of the soul, a skillful +watchmaker of the brain, delighting to examine the mechanism of a +passion and elucidate it by details of the wheel work. + +In this oddly formed mind existed unsurmised relationships of +thoughts, harmonies and oppositions; furthermore, he affected a wholly +novel manner of action which used the etymology of words as a +spring-board for ideas whose associations sometimes became tenuous, +but which almost constantly remained ingenious and sparkling. + +Thus, despite the awkwardness of his structure, he dissected with a +singular perspicacity, the _Avare_, "the ordinary man," and "the +passion of unhappiness," revealing meanwhile interesting comparisons +which could be constructed between the operations of photography and +of memory. + +But such skill in handling this perfected instrument of analysis, +stolen from the enemies of the Church, represented only one of the +temperamental phases of this man. + +Still another existed. This mind divided itself in two parts and +revealed, besides the writer, the religious fanatic and Biblical +prophet. + +Like Hugo, whom he now and again recalled in distortions of phrases +and words, Ernest Hello had delighted in imitating Saint John of +Patmos. He pontificated and vaticinated from his retreat in the rue +Saint-Sulpice, haranguing the reader with an apocalyptic language +partaking in spots of the bitterness of an Isaiah. + +He affected inordinate pretentions of profundity. There were some +fawning and complacent people who pretended to consider him a great +man, the reservoir of learning, the encyclopedic giant of the age. +Perhaps he was a well, but one at whose bottom one often could not +find a drop of water. + +In his volume _Paroles de Dieu_, he paraphrased the Holy Scriptures, +endeavoring to complicate their ordinarily obvious sense. In his other +book _Homme_, and in his brochure _le Jour du Seigneur_, written in a +biblical style, rugged and obscure, he sought to appear like a +vengeful apostle, prideful and tormented with spleen, but showed +himself a deacon touched with a mystic epilepsy, or like a talented +Maistre, a surly and bitter sectarian. + +But, thought Des Esseintes, this sickly shamelessness often obstructed +the inventive sallies of the casuist. With more intolerance than even +Ozanam, he resolutely denied all that pertained to his clan, +proclaimed the most disconcerting axioms, maintained with a +disconcerting authority that "geology is returning toward Moses," and +that natural history, like chemistry and every contemporary science, +verifies the scientific truth of the Bible. The proposition on each +page was of the unique truth and the superhuman knowledge of the +Church, and everywhere were interspersed more than perilous aphorisms +and raging curses cast at the art of the last century. + +To this strange mixture was added the love of sanctimonious delights, +such as a translation of the _Visions_ by Angele de Foligno, a book of +an unparalleled fluid stupidity, with selected works of Jean Rusbrock +l'Admirable, a mystic of the thirteenth century whose prose offered an +incomprehensible but alluring combination of dusky exaltations, +caressing effusions, and poignant transports. + +The whole attitude of this presumptuous pontiff, Hello, had leaped +from a preface written for this book. He himself remarked that +"extraordinary things can only be stammered," and he stammered in good +truth, declaring that "the holy gloom where Rusbrock extends his eagle +wings is his ocean, his prey, his glory, and for such as him the far +horizons would be a too narrow garment." + +However this might be, Des Esseintes felt himself intrigued toward +this ill-balanced but subtile mind. No fusion had been effected +between the skilful psychologist and the pious pedant, and the very +jolts and incoherencies constituted the personality of the man. + +With him was recruited the little group of writers who fought on the +front battle line of the clerical camp. They did not belong to the +regular army, but were more properly the scouts of a religion which +distrusted men of such talent as Veuillot and Hello, because they did +not seem sufficiently submissive and shallow. What the Church really +desires is soldiers who do not reason, files of such blind combatants +and such mediocrities as Hello describes with the rage of one who has +submitted to their yoke. Thus it was that Catholicism had lost no time +in driving away one of its partisans, an enraged pamphleteer who wrote +in a style at once rare and exasperated, the savage Leon Bloy; and +caused to be cast from the doors of its bookshops, as it would a +plague or a filthy vagrant, another writer who had made himself hoarse +with celebrating its praises, Barbey d'Aurevilly. + +It is true that the latter was too prone to compromise and not +sufficiently docile. Others bent their heads under rebukes and +returned to the ranks; but he was the _enfant terrible_, and was +unrecognized by the party. In a literary way, he pursued women whom he +dragged into the sanctuary. Nay, even that vast disdain was invoked, +with which Catholicism enshrouds talent to prevent excommunication +from putting beyond the pale of the law a perplexing servant who, +under pretext of honoring his masters, broke the window panes of the +chapel, juggled with the holy pyxes and executed eccentric dances +around the tabernacle. + +Two works of Barbey d'Aurevilly specially attracted Des Esseintes, the +_Pretre marie_ and the _Diaboliques_. Others, such as the _Ensorcele_, +the _Chevalier des touches_ and _Une Vieille Maitresse_, were +certainly more comprehensive and more finely balanced, but they left +Des Esseintes untouched, for he was really interested only in +unhealthy works which were consumed and irritated by fever. + +In these all but healthy volumes, Barbey d'Aurevilly constantly +hesitated between those two pits which the Catholic religion succeeds +in reconciling: mysticism and sadism. + +In these two books which Des Esseintes was thumbing, Barbey had lost +all prudence, given full rein to his steed, and galloped at full speed +over roads to their farthest limits. + +All the mysterious horror of the Middle Ages hovered over that +improbable book, the _Pretre marie_; magic blended with religion, +black magic with prayer and, more pitiless and savage than the Devil +himself, the God of Original Sin incessantly tortured the innocent +Calixte, His reprobate, as once He had caused one of his angels to +mark the houses of unbelievers whom he wished to slay. + +Conceived by a fasting monk in the grip of delirium, these scenes were +unfolded in the uneven style of a tortured soul. Unfortunately, among +those disordered creatures that were like galvanized Coppelias of +Hoffmann, some, like Neel de Nehou, seemed to have been imagined in +moments of exhaustion following convulsions, and were discordant notes +in this harmony of sombre madness, where they were as comical and +ridiculous as a tiny zinc figure playing on a horn on a timepiece. + +After these mystic divagations, the writer had experienced a period of +calm. Then a terrible relapse followed. + +This belief that man is a Buridanesque donkey, a being balanced +between two forces of equal attraction which successively remain +victorious and vanquished, this conviction that human life is only an +uncertain combat waged between hell and heaven, this faith in two +opposite beings, Satan and Christ, was fatally certain to engender +such inner discords of the soul, exalted by incessant struggle, +excited at once by promises and menaces, and ending by abandoning +itself to whichever of the two forces persisted in the pursuit the +more relentlessly. + +In the _Pretre marie_, Barbey d'Aurevilly sang the praises of Christ, +who had prevailed against temptations; in the _Diaboliques_, the +author succumbed to the Devil, whom he celebrated; then appeared +sadism, that bastard of Catholicism, which through the centuries +religion has relentlessly pursued with its exorcisms and stakes. + +This condition, at once fascinating and ambiguous, can not arise in +the soul of an unbeliever. It does not merely consist in sinking +oneself in the excesses of the flesh, excited by outrageous +blasphemies, for in such a case it would be no more than a case of +satyriasis that had reached its climax. Before all, it consists in +sacrilegious practice, in moral rebellion, in spiritual debauchery, in +a wholly ideal aberration, and in this it is exemplarily Christian. It +also is founded upon a joy tempered by fear, a joy analogous to the +satisfaction of children who disobey their parents and play with +forbidden things, for no reason other than that they had been +forbidden to do so. + +In fact, if it did not admit of sacrilege, sadism would have no reason +for existence. Besides, the sacrilege proceeding from the very +existence of a religion, can only be intentionally and pertinently +performed by a believer, for no one would take pleasure in profaning a +faith that was indifferent or unknown to him. + +The power of sadism and the attraction it presents, lies entirely then +in the prohibited enjoyment of transferring to Satan the praises and +prayers due to God; it lies in the non-observance of Catholic precepts +which one really follows unwillingly, by committing in deeper scorn of +Christ, those sins which the Church has especially cursed, such as +pollution of worship and carnal orgy. + +In its elements, this phenomenon to which the Marquis de Sade has +bequeathed his name is as old as the Church. It had reared its head in +the eighteenth century, recalling, to go back no farther, by a simple +phenomenon of atavism the impious practices of the Sabbath, the +witches' revels of the Middle Ages. + +By having consulted the _Malleus maleficorum_, that terrible code of +Jacob Sprenger which permits the Church wholesale burnings of +necromancers and sorcerers, Des Esseintes recognized in the witches' +Sabbath, all the obscene practices and all the blasphemies of sadism. +In addition to the unclean scenes beloved by Malin, the nights +successively and lawfully consecrated to excessive sensual orgies and +devoted to the bestialities of passion, he once more discovered the +parody of the processions, the insults and eternal threats levelled at +God and the devotion bestowed upon His rival, while amid cursing of +the wine and the bread, the black mass was being celebrated on the +back of a woman on all fours, whose stained bare thighs served as the +altar from which the congregation received the communion from a black +goblet stamped with an image of a goat. + +This profusion of impure mockeries and foul shames were marked in the +career of the Marquis de Sade, who garnished his terrible pleasures +with outrageous sacrileges. + +He cried out to the sky, invoked Lucifer, shouted his contempt of God, +calling Him rogue and imbecile, spat upon the communion, endeavored to +contaminate with vile ordures a Divinity who he prayed might damn him, +the while he declared, to defy Him the more, that He did not exist. + +Barbey d'Aurevilly approached this psychic state. If he did not +presume as far as De Sade in uttering atrocious curses against the +Saviour; if, more prudent or more timid, he claimed ever to honor the +Church, he none the less addressed his suit to the Devil as was done +in medieval times and he, too, in order to brave God, fell into +demoniac nymphomania, inventing sensual monstrosities, even borrowing +from bedroom philosophy a certain episode which he seasoned with new +condiments when he wrote the story _le Diner d'un athee_. + +This extravagant book pleased Des Esseintes. He had caused to be +printed, in violet ink and in a frame of cardinal purple, on a genuine +parchment which the judges of the Rota had blessed, a copy of the +_Diaboliques_, with characters whose quaint quavers and flourishes in +turned up tails and claws affected a satanic form. + +After certain pieces of Baudelaire that, in imitation of the clamorous +songs of nocturnal revels, celebrated infernal litanies, this volume +alone of all the works of contemporary apostolic literature testified +to this state of mind, at once impious and devout, toward which +Catholicism often thrust Des Esseintes. + +With Barbey d'Aurevilly ended the line of religious writers; and in +truth, that pariah belonged more, from every point of view, to secular +literature than to the other with which he demanded a place that was +denied him. His language was the language of disheveled romanticism, +full of involved expressions, unfamiliar turns of speech, delighted +with extravagant comparisons and with whip strokes and phrases which +exploded, like the clangor of noisy bells, along the text. In short, +d'Aurevilly was like a stallion among the geldings of the +ultramontaine stables. + +Des Esseintes reflected in this wise while re-reading, here and there, +several passages of the book and, comparing its nervous and changing +style with the fixed manner of other Church writers, he thought of the +evolution of language which Darwin has so truly revealed. + +Compelled to live in a secular atmosphere, raised in the heart of the +romantic school, constantly being in the current of modern literature +and accustomed to reading contemporary publications, Barbey +d'Aurevilly had acquired a dialect which although it had sustained +numerous and profound changes since the Great Age, had nevertheless +renewed itself in his works. + +The ecclesiastical writers, on the contrary, confined within specific +limitations, restricted to ancient Church literature, knowing nothing +of the literary progress of the centuries and determined if need be to +blind their eyes the more surely not to see, necessarily were +constrained to the use of an inflexible language, like that of the +eighteenth century which descendants of the French who settled in +Canada still speak and write today, without change of phrasing or +words, having succeeded in preserving their original idiom by +isolation in certain metropolitan centres, despite the fact that they +are enveloped upon every side by English-speaking peoples. + +Meanwhile the silvery sound of a clock that tolled the angelus +announced breakfast time to Des Esseintes. He abandoned his books, +pressed his brow and went to the dining room, saying to himself that, +among all the volumes he had just arranged, the works of Barbey +d'Aurevilly were the only ones whose ideas and style offered the +gaminess he so loved to savor in the Latin and decadent, monastic +writers of past ages. + + + + + Chapter 13 + + +As the season advanced, the weather, far from improving, grew worse. +Everything seemed to go wrong that year. After the squalls and mists, +the sky was covered with a white expanse of heat, like plates of sheet +iron. In two days, without transition, a torrid heat, an atmosphere of +frightful heaviness, succeeded the damp cold of foggy days and the +streaming of the rains. As though stirred by furious pokers, the sun +showed like a kiln-hole, darting a light almost white-hot, burning +one's face. A hot dust rose from the roads, scorching the dry trees, +and the yellowed lawns became a deep brown. A temperature like that of +a foundry hung over the dwelling of Des Esseintes. + +Half naked, he opened a window and received the air like a furnace +blast in his face. The dining room, to which he fled, was fiery, and +the rarefied air simmered. Utterly distressed, he sat down, for the +stimulation that had seized him had ended since the close of his +reveries. + +Like all people tormented by nervousness, heat distracted him. And his +anaemia, checked by cold weather, again became pronounced, weakening +his body which had been debilitated by copious perspiration. + +The back of his shirt was saturated, his perinaeum was damp, his feet +and arms moist, his brow overflowing with sweat that ran down his +cheeks. Des Esseintes reclined, annihilated, on a chair. + +The sight of the meat placed on the table at that moment caused his +stomach to rise. He ordered the food removed, asked for boiled eggs, +and tried to swallow some bread soaked in eggs, but his stomach would +have none of it. A fit of nausea overcame him. He drank a few drops of +wine that pricked his stomach like points of fire. He wet his face; +the perspiration, alternately warm and cold, coursed along his +temples. He began to suck some pieces of ice to overcome his troubled +heart--but in vain. + +So weak was he that he leaned against the table. He rose, feeling the +need of air, but the bread had slowly risen in his gullet and remained +there. Never had he felt so distressed, so shattered, so ill at ease. +To add to his discomfort, his eyes distressed him and he saw objects +in double. Soon he lost his sense of distance, and his glass seemed to +be a league away. He told himself that he was the play-thing of +sensorial illusions and that he was incapable of reacting. He +stretched out on a couch, but instantly he was cradled as by the +tossing of a moving ship, and the affection of his heart increased. He +rose to his feet, determined to rid himself, by means of a digestive, +of the food which was choking him. + +He again reached the dining room and sadly compared himself, in this +cabin, to passengers seized with sea-sickness. Stumbling, he made his +way to the closet, examined the mouth organ without opening any of the +stops, but instead took from a high shelf a bottle of benedictine +which he kept because of its form which to him seemed suggestive of +thoughts that were at once gently wanton and vaguely mystic. + +But at this moment he remained indifferent, gazing with lack-lustre, +staring eyes at this squat, dark-green bottle which, at other times, +had brought before him images of the medieval priories by its +old-fashioned monkish paunch, its head and neck covered with a +parchment hood, its red wax stamp quartered with three silver mitres +against a field of azure and fastened at the neck, like a papal bull, +with bands of lead, its label inscribed in sonorous Latin, on paper +that seemed to have yellowed with age: _Liquor Monachorum +Benedictinorum Abbatiae Fiscannensis_. + +Under this thoroughly abbatial robe, signed with a cross and the +ecclesiastic initials 'D.O.M.', pressed in between its parchments and +ligatures, slept an exquisitely fine saffron-colored liquid. It +breathed an aroma that seemed the quintessence of angelica and hyssop +blended with sea-weeds and of iodines and bromes hidden in sweet +essences, and it stimulated the palate with a spiritous ardor +concealed under a virginal daintiness, and charmed the sense of smell +by a pungency enveloped in a caress innocent and devout. + +This deceit which resulted from the extraordinary disharmony between +contents and container, between the liturgic form of the flask and its +so feminine and modern soul, had formerly stimulated Des Esseintes to +revery and, facing the bottle, he was inclined to think at great +length of the monks who sold it, the Benedictines of the Abbey of +Fecamp who, belonging to the brotherhood of Saint-Maur which had been +celebrated for its controversial works under the rule of Saint Benoit, +followed neither the observances of the white monks of Citeaux nor of +the black monks of Cluny. He could not but think of them as being like +their brethren of the Middle Ages, cultivating simples, heating +retorts and distilling faultless panaceas and prescriptions. + +He tasted a drop of this liquor and, for a few moments, had relief. +But soon the fire, which the dash of wine had lit in his bowels, +revived. He threw down his napkin, returned to his study, and paced +the floor. He felt as if he were under a pneumatic clock, and a +numbing weakness stole from his brain through his limbs. Unable to +endure it longer, he betook himself to the garden. It was the first +time he had done this since his arrival at Fontenay. There he found +shelter beneath a tree which radiated a circle of shadow. Seated on +the lawn, he looked around with a besotted air at the square beds of +vegetables planted by the servants. He gazed, but it was only at the +end of an hour that he really saw them, for a greenish film floated +before his eyes, permitting him only to see, as in the depths of +water, flickering images of shifting tones. + +But when he recovered his balance, he clearly distinguished the onions +and cabbages, a garden bed of lettuce further off, and, in the +distance along the hedge, a row of white lillies recumbent in the +heavy air. + +A smile played on his lips, for he suddenly recalled the strange +comparison of old Nicandre, who likened, in the point of form, the +pistils of lillies to the genital organs of a donkey; and he recalled +also a passage from Albert le Grand, in which that thaumaturgist +describes a strange way of discovering whether a girl is still a +virgin, by means of a lettuce. + +These remembrances distracted him somewhat. He examined the garden, +interesting himself in the plants withered by the heat, and in the hot +ground whose vapors rose into the dusty air. Then, above the hedge +which separated the garden below from the embankment leading to the +fort, he watched the urchins struggling and tumbling on the ground. + +He was concentrating his attention upon them when another younger, +sorry little specimen appeared. He had hair like seaweed covered with +sand, two green bubbles beneath his nose, and disgusting lips +surrounded by a dirty white frame formed by a slice of bread smeared +with cheese and filled with pieces of scallions. + +Des Esseintes inhaled the air. A perverse appetite seized him. This +dirty slice made his mouth water. It seemed to him that his stomach, +refusing all other nourishment, could digest this shocking food, and +that his palate would enjoy it as though it were a feast. + +He leaped up, ran to the kitchen and ordered a loaf, white cheese and +green onions to be brought from the village, emphasizing his desire +for a slice exactly like the one being eaten by the child. Then he +returned to sit beneath the tree. + +The little chaps were fighting with one another. They struggled for +bits of bread which they shoved into their cheeks, meanwhile sucking +their fingers. Kicks and blows rained freely, and the weakest, +trampled upon, cried out. + +At this sight, Des Esseintes recovered his animation. The interest he +took in this fight distracted his thoughts from his illness. +Contemplating the blind fury of these urchins, he thought of the cruel +and abominable law of the struggle of existence; and, although these +children were mean, he could not help being interested in their +futures, yet could not but believe that it had been better for them +had their mothers never given them birth. + +In fact, all they could expect of life was rash, colic, fever, and +measles in their earliest years; slaps in the face and degrading +drudgeries up to thirteen years; deceptions by women, sicknesses and +infidelity during manhood and, toward the last, infirmities and +agonies in a poorhouse or asylum. + +And the future was the same for every one, and none in his good senses +could envy his neighbor. The rich had the same passions, the same +anxieties, the same pains and the same illnesses, but in a different +environment; the same mediocre enjoyments, whether alcoholic, literary +or carnal. There was even a vague compensation in evils, a sort of +justice which re-established the balance of misfortune between the +classes, permitting the poor to bear physical suffering more easily, +and making it difficult for the unresisting, weaker bodies of the rich +to withstand it. + +How vain, silly and mad it is to beget brats! And Des Esseintes +thought of those ecclesiastics who had taken vows of sterility, yet +were so inconsistent as to canonize Saint Vincent de Paul, because he +brought vain tortures to innocent creatures. + +By means of his hateful precautions, Vincent de Paul had deferred for +years the death of unintelligent and insensate beings, in such a way +that when they later became almost intelligent and sentient to grief, +they were able to anticipate the future, to await and fear that death +of whose very name they had of late been ignorant, some of them going +as far to invoke it, in hatred of that sentence of life which the monk +inflicted upon them by an absurd theological code. + +And since this old man's death, his ideas had prevailed. Abandoned +children were sheltered instead of being killed and yet their lives +daily became increasingly rigorous and barren! Then, under pretext of +liberty and progress, Society had discovered another means of +increasing man's miseries by tearing him from his home, forcing him to +don a ridiculous uniform and carry weapons, by brutalizing him in a +slavery in every respect like that from which he had compassionately +freed the negro, and all to enable him to slaughter his neighbor +without risking the scaffold like ordinary murderers who operate +single-handed, without uniforms and with weapons that are less swift +and deafening. + +Des Esseintes wondered if there had ever been such a time as ours. Our +age invokes the causes of humanity, endeavors to perfect anaesthesia +to suppress physical suffering. Yet at the same time it prepares these +very stimulants to increase moral wretchedness. + +Ah! if ever this useless procreation should be abolished, it were now. +But here, again, the laws enacted by men like Portalis and Homais +appeared strange and cruel. + +In the matter of generation, Justice finds the agencies for deception +to be quite natural. It is a recognized and acknowledged fact. There +is scarcely a home of any station that does not confide its children +to the drain pipes, or that does not employ contrivances that are +freely sold, and which it would enter no person's mind to prohibit. +And yet, if these subterfuges proved insufficient, if the attempt +miscarried and if, to remedy matters, one had recourse to more +efficacious measures, ah! then there were not prisons enough, not +municipal jails enough to confine those who, in good faith, were +condemned by other individuals who had that very evening, on the +conjugal bed, done their utmost to avoid giving birth to children. + +The deceit itself was not a crime, it seemed. The crime lay in the +justification of the deceit. + +What Society considered a crime was the act of killing a being endowed +with life; and yet, in expelling a foetus, one destroyed an animal +that was less formed and living and certainly less intelligent and +more ugly than a dog or a cat, although it is permissible to strangle +these creatures as soon as they are born. + +It is only right to add, for the sake of fairness, thought Des +Esseintes, that it is not the awkward man, who generally loses no time +in disappearing, but rather the woman, the victim of his stupidity, +who expiates the crime of having saved an innocent life. + +Yet was it right that the world should be filled with such prejudice +as to wish to repress manoeuvres so natural that primitive man, the +Polynesian savage, for instance, instinctively practices them? + +The servant interrupted the charitable reflections of Des Esseintes, +who received the slice of bread on a plate of vermeil. Pains shot +through his heart. He did not have the courage to eat this bread, for +the unhealthy excitement of his stomach had ceased. A sensation of +frightful decay swept upon him. He was compelled to rise. The sun +turned, and slowly fell upon the place that he had lately occupied. +The heat became more heavy and fierce. + +"Throw this slice of bread to those children who are murdering each +other on the road," he ordered his servant. "Let the weakest be +crippled, be denied share in the prize, and be soundly thrashed into +the bargain, as they will be when they return to their homes with torn +trousers and bruised eyes. This will give them an idea of the life +that awaits them!" + +And he entered the house and sank into his armchair. + +"But I must try to eat something," he said. And he attempted to soak a +biscuit in old Constantia wine, several bottles of which remained in +his cellar. + +That wine, the color of slightly burned onions, partaking of Malaga +and Port, but with a specially luscious flavor, and an after-taste of +grapes dried by fiery suns, had often comforted him, given a new +energy to his stomach weakened by the fasts which he was forced to +undergo. But this cordial, usually so efficacious, now failed. Then he +thought that an emollient might perhaps counteract the fiery pains +which were consuming him, and he took out the Nalifka, a Russian +liqueur, contained in a bottle frosted with unpolished glass. This +unctuous raspberry-flavored syrup also failed. Alas! the time was far +off when, enjoying good health, Des Esseintes had ridden to his house +in the hot summer days in a sleigh, and there, covered with furs +wrapped about his chest, forced himself to shiver, saying, as he +listened attentively to the chattering of his teeth: "Ah, how biting +this wind is! It is freezing!" Thus he had almost succeeded in +convincing himself that it was cold. + +Unfortunately, such remedies as these had failed of their purpose ever +since his sickness became vital. + +With all this, he was unable to make use of laudanum: instead of +allaying the pain, this sedative irritated him even to the degree of +depriving him of rest. At one time he had endeavored to procure +visions through opium and hashish, but these two substances had led to +vomitings and intense nervous disturbances. He had instantly been +forced to give up the idea of taking them, and without the aid of +these coarse stimulants, demand of his brain alone to transport him +into the land of dreams, far, far from life. + +"What a day!" he said to himself, sponging his neck, feeling every +ounce of his strength dissolve in perspiration; a feverish agitation +still prevented him from remaining in one spot; once more he walked up +and down, trying every chair in the room in turn. Wearied of the +struggle, at last he fell against his bureau and leaning mechanically +against the table, without thinking of anything, he touched an +astrolabe which rested on a mass of books and notes and served as a +paper weight. + +He had purchased this engraved and gilded copper instrument (it had +come from Germany and dated from the seventeenth century) of a +second-hand Paris dealer, after a visit to the Cluny Museum, where he +had stood for a long while in ecstatic admiration before a marvelous +astrolabe made of chiseled ivory, whose cabalistic appearance +enchanted him. + +This paper weight evoked many reminiscences within him. Aroused and +actuated by the appearance of this trinket, his thoughts rushed from +Fontenay to Paris, to the curio shop where he had purchased it, then +returned to the Museum, and he mentally beheld the ivory astrolabe, +while his unseeing eyes continued to gaze upon the copper astrolabe on +the table. + +Then he left the Museum and, without quitting the town, strolled down +the streets, wandered through the rue du Sommerard and the boulevard +Saint-Michel, branched off into the neighboring streets, and paused +before certain shops whose quite extraordinary appearance and +profusion had often attracted him. + +Beginning with an astrolabe, this spiritual jaunt ended in the cafes +of the Latin Quarter. + +He remembered how these places were crowded in the rue +Monsieur-le-Prince and at the end of the rue de Vaugirard, touching +the Odeon; sometimes they followed one another like the old _riddecks_ +of the Canal-aux-Harengs, at Antwerp, each of which revealed a front, +the counterpart of its neighbor. + +Through the half-opened doors and the windows dimmed with colored +panes or curtains, he had often seen women who walked about like +geese; others, on benches, rested their elbows on the marble tables, +humming, their temples resting between their hands; still others +strutted and posed in front of mirrors, playing with their false hair +pomaded by hair-dressers; others, again, took money from their purses +and methodically sorted the different denominations in little heaps. + +Most of them had heavy features, hoarse voices, flabby necks and +painted eyes; and all of them, like automatons, moved simultaneously +upon the same impulse, flung the same enticements with the same tone +and uttered the identical queer words, the same odd inflections and +the same smile. + +Certain ideas associated themselves in the mind of Des Esseintes, +whose reveries came to an end, now that he recalled this collection of +coffee-houses and streets. + +He understood the significance of those cafes which reflected the +state of soul of an entire generation, and from it he discovered the +synthesis of the period. + +And, in fact, the symptoms were certain and obvious. The houses of +prostitution disappeared, and as soon as one of them closed, a cafe +began to operate. + +This restriction of prostitution which proved profitable to +clandestine loves, evidently arose from the incomprehensible illusions +of men in the matter of carnal life. + +Monstrous as it may appear, these haunts satisfied an ideal. + +Although the utilitarian tendencies transmitted by heredity and +developed by the precocious rudeness and constant brutalities of the +colleges had made the youth of the day strangely crude and as +strangely positive and cold, it had none the less preserved, in the +back of their heads, an old blue flower, an old ideal of a vague, sour +affection. + +Today, when the blood clamored, youths could not bring themselves to +go through the formality of entering, ending, paying and leaving; in +their eyes, this was bestiality, the action of a dog attacking a bitch +without much ado. Then, too, vanity fled unsatisfied from these houses +where there was no semblance of resistance; there was no victory, no +hoped for preference, nor even largess obtained from the tradeswoman +who measured her caresses according to the price. On the contrary, the +courting of a girl of the cafes stimulated all the susceptibilities of +love, all the refinements of sentiment. One disputed with the others +for such a girl, and those to whom she granted a rendezvous, in +consideration of much money, were sincere in imagining that they had +won her from a rival, and in so thinking they were the objects of +honorary distinction and favor. + +Yet this domesticity was as stupid, as selfish, as vile as that of +houses of ill-fame. Its creatures drank without being thirsty, laughed +without reason, were charmed by the caresses of a slut, quarrelled and +fought for no reason whatever, despite everything. The Parisian youth +had not been able to see that these girls were, from the point of +plastic beauty, graceful attitudes and necessary attire, quite +inferior to the women in the bawdy houses! "My God," Des Esseintes +exclaimed, "what ninnies are these fellows who flutter around the +cafes; for, over and above their silly illusions, they forget the +danger of degraded, suspicious allurements, and they are unaware of +the sums of money given for affairs priced in advance by the mistress, +of the time lost in waiting for an assignation deferred so as to +increase its value and cost, delays which are repeated to provide more +tips for the waiters." + +This imbecile sentimentality, combined with a ferociously practical +sense, represented the dominant motive of the age. These very persons +who would have gouged their neighbors' eyes to gain ten _sous_, lost +all presence of mind and discrimination before suspicious looking +girls in restaurants who pitilessly harassed and relentlessly fleeced +them. Fathers devoted their lives to their businesses and labors, +families devoured one another on the pretext of trade, only to be +robbed by their sons who, in turn, allowed themselves to be fleeced by +women who posed as sweethearts to obtain their money. + +In all Paris, from east to west and from north to south, there existed +an unbroken chain of female tricksters, a system of organized theft, +and all because, instead of satisfying men at once, these women were +skilled in the subterfuges of delay. + +At bottom, one might say that human wisdom consisted in the +protraction of all things, in saying "no" before saying "yes," for one +could manage people only by trifling with them. + +"Ah! if the same were but true of the stomach," sighed Des Esseintes, +racked by a cramp which instantly and sharply brought back his mind, +that had roved far off, to Fontenay. + + + + + Chapter 14 + + +Several days slowly passed thanks to certain measures which succeeded +in tricking the stomach, but one morning Des Esseintes could endure +food no longer, and he asked himself anxiously whether his already +serious weakness would not grow worse and force him to take to bed. A +sudden gleam of light relieved his distress; he remembered that one of +his friends, quite ill at one time, had made use of a Papin's digester +to overcome his anaemia and preserve what little strength he had. + +He dispatched his servant to Paris for this precious utensil, and +following the directions contained in the prospectus which the +manufacturer had enclosed, he himself instructed the cook how to cut +the roast beef into bits, put it into the pewter pot, with a slice of +leek and carrot, and screw on the cover to let it boil for four hours. + +At the end of this time the meat fibres were strained. He drank a +spoonful of the thick salty juice deposited at the bottom of the pot. +Then he felt a warmth, like a smooth caress, descend upon him. + +This nourishment relieved his pain and nausea, and even strengthened +his stomach which did not refuse to accept these few drops of soup. + +Thanks to this digester, his neurosis was arrested and Des Esseintes +said to himself: "Well, it is so much gained; perhaps the temperature +will change, the sky will throw some ashes upon this abominable sun +which exhausts me, and I shall hold out without accident till the +first fogs and frosts of winter." + +In the torpor and listless ennui in which he was sunk, the disorder of +his library, whose arrangement had never been completed, irritated +him. Helpless in his armchair, he had constantly in sight the books +set awry on the shelves propped against each other or lying flat on +their sides, like a tumbled pack of cards. This disorder offended him +the more when he contrasted it with the perfect order of his religious +works, carefully placed on parade along the walls. + +He tried to clear up the confusion, but after ten minutes of work, +perspiration covered him; the effort weakened him. He stretched +himself on a couch and rang for his servant. + +Following his directions, the old man continued the task, bringing +each book in turn to Des Esseintes who examined it and directed where +it was to be placed. + +This task did not last long, for Des Esseintes' library contained but +a very limited number of contemporary, secular works. + +They were drawn through his brain as bands of metal are drawn through +a steel-plate from which they issue thin, light, and reduced to almost +imperceptible wires; and he had ended by possessing only those books +which could submit to such treatment and which were so solidly +tempered as to withstand the rolling-mill of each new reading. In his +desire to refine, he had restrained and almost sterilized his +enjoyment, ever accentuating the irremediable conflict existing +between his ideas and those of the world in which he had happened to +be born. He had now reached such a pass that he could no longer +discover any writings to content his secret longings. And his +admiration even weaned itself from those volumes which had certainly +contributed to sharpen his mind, making it so suspicious and subtle. + +In art, his ideas had sprung from a simple point of view. For him +schools did not exist, and only the temperament of the writer +mattered, only the working of his brain interested him, regardless of +the subject. Unfortunately, this verity of appreciation, worthy of +Palisse, was scarcely applicable, for the simple reason that, even +while desiring to be free of prejudices and passion, each person +naturally goes to the works which most intimately correspond with his +own temperament, and ends by relegating all others to the rear. + +This work of selection had slowly acted within him; not long ago he +had adored the great Balzac, but as his body weakened and his nerves +became troublesome, his tastes modified and his admirations changed. + +Very soon, and despite the fact that he was aware of his injustice to +the amazing author of the _Comedie humaine_, Des Esseintes had reached +a point where he no longer opened Balzac's books; their healthy spirit +jarred on him. Other aspirations now stirred in him, somehow becoming +undefinable. + +Yet when he probed himself he understood that to attract, a work must +have that character of strangeness demanded by Edgar Allen Poe; but he +ventured even further on this path and called for Byzantine flora of +brain and complicated deliquescences of language. He desired a +troubled indecision on which he might brood until he could shape it at +will to a more vague or determinate form, according to the momentary +state of his soul. In short, he desired a work of art both for what it +was in itself and for what it permitted him to endow it. He wished to +pass by means of it into a sphere of sublimated sensation which would +arouse in him new commotions whose cause he might long and vainly seek +to analyze. + +In short, since leaving Paris, Des Esseintes was removing himself +further and further from reality, especially from the contemporary +world which he held in an ever growing detestation. This hatred had +inevitably reacted on his literary and artistic tastes, and he would +have as little as possible to do with paintings and books whose +limited subjects dealt with modern life. + +Thus, losing the faculty of admiring beauty indiscriminately under +whatever form it was presented, he preferred Flaubert's _Tentation de +saint Antoine_ to his _Education sentimentale_; Goncourt's _Faustin_ +to his _Germinie Lacerteux_; Zola's _Faute de l'abbe Mouret_ to his +_Assommoir_. + +This point of view seemed logical to him; these works less immediate, +but just as vibrant and human, enabled him to penetrate farther into +the depths of the temperaments of these masters who revealed in them +the most mysterious transports of their being with a more sincere +abandon; and they lifted him far above this trivial life which wearied +him so. + +In them he entered into a perfect communion of ideas with their +authors who had written them when their state of soul was analogous to +his own. + +In fact, when the period in which a man of talent is obliged to live +is dull and stupid, the artist, though unconsciously, is haunted by a +nostalgia of some past century. + +Finding himself unable to harmonize, save at rare intervals, with the +environment in which he lives and not discovering sufficient +distraction in the pleasures of observation and analysis, in the +examination of the environment and its people, he feels in himself the +dawning of strange ideas. Confused desires for other lands awake and +are clarified by reflection and study. Instincts, sensations and +thoughts bequeathed by heredity, awake, grow fixed, assert themselves +with an imperious assurance. He recalls memories of beings and things +he has never really known and a time comes when he escapes from the +penitentiary of his age and roves, in full liberty, into another epoch +with which, through a last illusion, he seems more in harmony. + +With some, it is a return to vanished ages, to extinct civilizations, +to dead epochs; with others, it is an urge towards a fantastic future, +to a more or less intense vision of a period about to dawn, whose +image, by an effect of atavism of which he is unaware, is a +reproduction of some past age. + +In Flaubert this nostalgia is expressed in solemn and majestic +pictures of magnificent splendors, in whose gorgeous, barbaric frames +move palpitating and delicate creatures, mysterious and haughty--women +gifted, in the perfection of their beauty, with souls capable of +suffering and in whose depths he discerned frightful derangements, mad +aspirations, grieved as they were by the haunting premonition of the +dissillusionments their follies held in store. + +The temperament of this great artist is fully revealed in the +incomparable pages of the _Tentation de saint Antoine_ and _Salammbo_ +where, far from our sorry life, he evokes the splendors of old Asia, +the age of fervent prayer and mystic depression, of languorous +passions and excesses induced by the unbearable ennui resulting from +opulence and prayer. + +In de Goncourt, it was the nostalgia of the preceding century, a +return to the elegances of a society forever lost. The stupendous +setting of seas beating against jetties, of deserts stretching under +torrid skies to distant horizons, did not exist in his nostalgic work +which confined itself to a boudoir, near an aulic park, scented with +the voluptuous fragrance of a woman with a tired smile, a perverse +little pout and unresigned, pensive eyes. The soul with which he +animated his characters was not that breathed by Flaubert into his +creatures, no longer the soul early thrown in revolt by the inexorable +certainty that no new happiness is possible; it was a soul that had +too late revolted, after the experience, against all the useless +attempts to invent new spiritual liaisons and to heighten the +enjoyment of lovers, which from immemorial times has always ended in +satiety. + +Although she lived in, and partook of the life of our time, Faustin, +by her ancestral influences, was a creature of the past century whose +cerebral lassitude and sensual excesses she possessed. + +This book of Edmond de Goncourt was one of the volumes which Des +Esseintes loved best, and the suggestion of revery which he demanded +lived in this work where, under each written line, another line was +etched, visible to the spirit alone, indicated by a hint which +revealed passion, by a reticence permitting one to divine subtle +states of soul which no idiom could express. And it was no longer +Flaubert's language in its inimitable magnificence, but a morbid, +perspicacious style, nervous and twisted, keen to note the impalpable +impression that strikes the senses, a style expert in modulating the +complicated nuances of an epoch which in itself was singularly +complex. In short, it was the epithet indispensable to decrepit +civilizations, no matter how old they be, which must have words with +new meanings and forms, innovations in phrases and words for their +complex needs. + +At Rome, the dying paganism had modified its prosody and transmuted +its language with Ausonius, with Claudian and Rutilius whose +attentive, scrupulous, sonorous and powerful style presented, in its +descriptive parts especially, reflections, hints and nuances bearing +an affinity with the style of de Goncourt. + +At Paris, a fact unique in literary history had been consummated. That +moribund society of the eighteenth century, which possessed painters, +musicians and architects imbued with its tastes and doctrines, had not +been able to produce a writer who could truly depict its dying +elegances, the quintessence of its joys so cruelly expiated. It had +been necessary to await the arrival of de Goncourt (whose temperament +was formed of memories and regrets made more poignant by the sad +spectacle of the intellectual poverty and the pitiful aspirations of +his own time) to resuscitate, not only in his historical works, but +even more in _Faustin_, the very soul of that period; incarnating its +nervous refinements in this actress who tortured her mind and her +senses so as to savor to exhaustion the grievous revulsives of love +and of art. + +With Zola, the nostalgia of the far-away was different. In him was no +longing for vanished ages, no aspiring toward worlds lost in the night +of time. His strong and solid temperament, dazzled with the luxuriance +of life, its sanguine forces and moral health, diverted him from the +artificial graces and painted chloroses of the past century, as well +as from the hierarchic solemnity, the brutal ferocity and misty, +effeminate dreams of the old orient. When he, too, had become obsessed +by this nostalgia, by this need, which is nothing less than poetry +itself, of shunning the contemporary world he was studying, he had +rushed into an ideal and fruitful country, had dreamed of fantastic +passions of skies, of long raptures of earth, and of fecund rains of +pollen falling into panting organs of flowers. He had ended in a +gigantic pantheism, had created, unwittingly perhaps, with this +Edenesque environment in which he placed his Adam and Eve, a marvelous +Hindoo poem, singing, in a style whose broad, crude strokes had +something of the bizarre brilliance of an Indian painting, the song of +the flesh, of animated living matter revealing, to the human creature, +by its passion for reproduction the forbidden fruits of love, its +suffocations, its instinctive caresses and natural attitudes. + +With Baudelaire, these three masters had most affected Des Esseintes +in modern, French, secular literature. But he had read them so often, +had saturated himself in them so completely, that in order to absorb +them he had been compelled to lay them aside and let them remain +unread on his shelves. + +Even now when the servant was arranging them for him, he did not care +to open them, and contented himself merely with indicating the place +they were to occupy and seeing that they were properly classified and +put away. + +The servant brought him a new series of books. These oppressed him +more. They were books toward which his taste had gradually veered, +books which diverted him by their very faults from the perfection of +more vigorous writers. Here, too, Des Esseintes had reached the point +where he sought, among these troubled pages, only phrases which +discharged a sort of electricity that made him tremble; they +transmitted their fluid through a medium which at first sight seemed +refractory. + +Their imperfections pleased him, provided they were neither parasitic +nor servile, and perhaps there was a grain of truth in his theory that +the inferior and decadent writer, who is more subjective, though +unfinished, distills a more irritating aperient and acid balm than the +artist of the same period who is truly great. In his opinion, it was +in their turbulent sketches that one perceived the exaltations of the +most excitable sensibilities, the caprices of the most morbid +psychological states, the most extravagant depravities of language +charged, in spite of its rebelliousness, with the difficult task of +containing the effervescent salts of sensations and ideas. + +Thus, after the masters, he betook himself to a few writers who +attracted him all the more because of the disdain in which they were +held by the public incapable of understanding them. + +One of them was Paul Verlaine who had begun with a volume of verse, +the _Poemes Saturniens_, a rather ineffectual book where imitations of +Leconte de Lisle jostled with exercises in romantic rhetoric, but +through which already filtered the real personality of the poet in +such poems as the sonnet _Reve Familier_. + +In searching for his antecedents, Des Esseintes discovered, under the +hesitant strokes of the sketches, a talent already deeply affected by +Baudelaire, whose influence had been accentuated later on, acquiesced +in by the peerless master; but the imitation was never flagrant. + +And in some of his books, _Bonne Chanson_, _Fetes Galantes_, _Romances +sans paroles_, and his last volume, _Sagesse_, were poems where he +himself was revealed as an original and outstanding figure. + +With rhymes obtained from verb tenses, sometimes even from long +adverbs preceded by a monosyllable from which they fell as from a rock +into a heavy cascade of water, his verses, divided by improbable +caesuras, often became strangely obscure with their audacious ellipses +and strange inaccuracies which none the less did not lack grace. + +With his unrivalled ability to handle metre, he had sought to +rejuvenate the fixed poetic forms. He turned the tail of the sonnet +into the air, like those Japanese fish of polychrome clay which rest +on stands, their heads straight down, their tails on top. Sometimes he +corrupted it by using only masculine rhymes to which he seemed +partial. He had often employed a bizarre form--a stanza of three lines +whose middle verse was unrhymed, and a tiercet with but one rhyme, +followed by a single line, an echoing refrain like "Dansons la Gigue" +in _Streets_. He had employed other rhymes whose dim echoes are +repeated in remote stanzas, like faint reverberations of a bell. + +But his personality expressed itself most of all in vague and +delicious confidences breathed in hushed accents, in the twilight. He +alone had been able to reveal the troubled Ultima Thules of the soul; +low whisperings of thoughts, avowals so haltingly and murmuringly +confessed that the ear which hears them remains hesitant, passing on +to the soul languors quickened by the mystery of this suggestion which +is divined rather than felt. Everything characteristic of Verlaine was +expressed in these adorable verses of the _Fetes Galantes_: + + Le soir tombait, un soir equivoque + d'automne, + Les belles se pendant reveuses a nos + bras, + Dirent alors des mots si specieux tout + bas, + Que notre ame depuis ce temps + tremble et s'etonne + +It was no longer the immense horizon opened by the unforgettable +portals of Baudelaire; it was a crevice in the moonlight, opening on a +field which was more intimate and more restrained, peculiar to +Verlaine who had formulated his poetic system in those lines of which +Des Esseintes was so fond: + + Car nous voulons la nuance encore, + Pas la couleur, rien que la nuance. + Et tout le reste est litterature. + +Des Esseintes had followed him with delight in his most diversified +works. After his _Romances sans paroles_ which had appeared in a +journal, Verlaine had preserved a long silence, reappearing later in +those charming verses, hauntingly suggestive of the gentle and cold +accents of Villon, singing of the Virgin, "removed from our days of +carnal thought and weary flesh." Des Esseintes often re-read _Sagesse_ +whose poems provoked him to secret reveries, a fanciful love for a +Byzantine Madonna who, at a certain moment, changed into a distracted +modern Cydalise so mysterious and troubling that one could not know +whether she aspired toward depravities so monstrous that they became +irresistible, or whether she moved in an immaculate dream where the +adoration of the soul floated around her ever unavowed and ever pure. + +There were other poets, too, who induced him to confide himself to +them: Tristan Corbiere who, in 1873, in the midst of the general +apathy had issued a most eccentric volume entitled: _Les Amours +jaunes_. Des Esseintes who, in his hatred of the banal and +commonplace, would gladly have accepted the most affected folly and +the most singular extravagance, spent many enjoyable hours with this +work where drollery mingled with a disordered energy, and where +disconcerting lines blazed out of poems so absolutely obscure as the +litanies of _Sommeil_, that they qualified their author for the name +of + + Obscene confesseur des devotes mort-nees. + +The style was hardly French. The author wrote in the negro dialect, +was telegraphic in form, suppressed verbs, affected a teasing +phraseology, revelled in the impossible puns of a travelling salesman; +then out of this jumble, laughable conceits and sly affectations +emerged, and suddenly a cry of keen anguish rang out, like the +snapping string of a violoncello. And with all this, in his hard +rugged style, bristling with obsolescent words and unexpected +neologisms, flashed perfect originalities, treasures of expression and +superbly nomadic lines amputated of rhyme. Finally, over and above his +_Poemes Parisiens_, where Des Esseintes had discovered this profound +definition of woman: + + Eternel feminin de l'eternel jocrisse + +Tristan Corbiere had celebrated in a powerfully concise style, the Sea +of Brittany, mermaids and the Pardon of Saint Anne. And he had even +risen to an eloquence of hate in the insults he hurled, apropos of the +Conlie camp, at the individuals whom he designated under the name of +"foreigners of the Fourth of September." + +The raciness of which he was so fond, which Corbiere offered him in +his sharp epithets, his beauties which ever remained a trifle suspect, +Des Esseintes found again in another poet, Theodore Hannon, a disciple +of Baudelaire and Gautier, moved by a very unusual sense of the +exquisite and the artificial. + +Unlike Verlaine whose work was directly influenced by Baudelaire, +especially on the psychological side, in his insidious nuances of +thought and skilful quintessence of sentiment, Theodore Hannon +especially descended from the master on the plastic side, by the +external vision of persons and things. + +His charming corruption fatally corresponded to the tendencies of Des +Esseintes who, on misty or rainy days, enclosed himself in the retreat +fancied by the poet and intoxicated his eyes with the rustlings of his +fabrics, with the incandescence of his stones, with his exclusively +material sumptuousness which ministered to cerebral reactions, and +rose like a cantharides powder in a cloud of fragrant incense toward a +Brussel idol with painted face and belly stained by the perfumes. + +With the exception of the works of these poets and of Stephane +Mallarme, which his servant was told to place to one side so that he +might classify them separately, Des Esseintes was but slightly +attracted towards the poets. + +Notwithstanding the majestic form and the imposing quality of his +verse which struck such a brilliant note that even the hexameters of +Hugo seemed pale in comparison, Leconte de Lisle could no longer +satisfy him. The antiquity so marvelously restored by Flaubert +remained cold and immobile in his hands. Nothing palpitated in his +verses, which lacked depth and which, most often, contained no idea. +Nothing moved in those gloomy, waste poems whose impassive mythologies +ended by finally leaving him cold. Too, after having long delighted in +Gautier, Des Esseintes reached the point where he no longer cared for +him. The admiration he felt for this man's incomparable painting had +gradually dissolved; now he was more astonished than ravished by his +descriptions. Objects impressed themselves upon Gautier's perceptive +eyes but they went no further, they never penetrated deeper into his +brain and flesh. Like a giant mirror, this writer constantly limited +himself to reflecting surrounding objects with impersonal clearness. +Certainly, Des Esseintes still loved the works of these two poets, as +he loved rare stones and precious objects, but none of the variations +of these perfect instrumentalists could hold him longer, neither being +evocative of revery, neither opening for him, at least, broad roads of +escape to beguile the tedium of dragging hours. + +These two books left him unsatisfied. And it was the same with Hugo; +the oriental and patriarchal side was too conventional and barren to +detain him. And his manners, at once childish and that of a +grandfather, exasperated him. He had to go to the _Chansons des rues +et des bois_ to enjoy the perfect acrobatics of his metrics. But how +gladly, after all, would he not have exchanged all this _tour de +force_ for a new work by Baudelaire which might equal the others, for +he, decidedly, was almost the only one whose verses, under their +splendid form, contained a healing and nutritive substance. In passing +from one extreme to the other, from form deprived of ideas to ideas +deprived of form, Des Esseintes remained no less circumspect and cold. +The psychological labyrinths of Stendhal, the analytical detours of +Duranty seduced him, but their administrative, colorless and arid +language, their static prose, fit at best for the wretched industry of +the theatre, repelled him. Then their interesting works and their +astute analyses applied to brains agitated by passions in which he was +no longer interested. He was not at all concerned with general +affections or points of view, with associations of common ideas, now +that the reserve of his mind was more keenly developed and that he no +longer admitted aught but superfine sensations and catholic or sensual +torments. To enjoy a work which should combine, according to his +wishes, incisive style with penetrating and feline analysis, he had to +go to the master of induction, the profound and strange Edgar Allen +Poe, for whom, since the time when he re-read him, his preference had +never wavered. + +More than any other, perhaps, he approached, by his intimate affinity, +Des Esseintes' meditative cast of mind. + +If Baudelaire, in the hieroglyphics of the soul, had deciphered the +return of the age of sentiment and ideas, Poe, in the field of morbid +psychology had more especially investigated the domain of the soul. + +Under the emblematic title, _The Demon of Perversity_, he had been the +first in literature to pry into the irresistible, unconscious impulses +of the will which mental pathology now explains more scientifically. +He had also been the first to divulge, if not to signal the impressive +influence of fear which acts on the will like an anaesthetic, +paralyzing sensibility and like the curare, stupefying the nerves. It +was on the problem of the lethargy of the will, that Poe had centered +his studies, analyzing the effects of this moral poison, indicating +the symptoms of its progress, the troubles commencing with anxiety, +continuing through anguish, ending finally in the terror which deadens +the will without intelligence succumbing, though sorely disturbed. +Death, which the dramatists had so much abused, he had in some manner +changed and made more poignant, by introducing an algebraic and +superhuman element; but in truth, it was less the real agony of the +dying person which he described and more the moral agony of the +survivor, haunted at the death bed by monstrous hallucinations +engendered by grief and fatigue. With a frightful fascination, he +dwelt on acts of terror, on the snapping of the will, coldly reasoning +about them, little by little making the reader gasp, suffocated and +panting before these feverish mechanically contrived nightmares. + +Convulsed by hereditary neurosis, maddened by a moral St. Vitus dance, +Poe's creatures lived only through their nerves; his women, the +Morellas and Ligeias, possessed an immense erudition. They were +steeped in the mists of German philosophy and the cabalistic mysteries +of the old Orient; and all had the boyish and inert breasts of angels, +all were sexless. + +Baudelaire and Poe, these two men who had often been compared because +of their common poetic strain and predilection for the examination of +mental maladies, differed radically in the affective conceptions which +held such a large place in their works; Baudelaire with his iniquitous +and debased loves--cruel loves which made one think of the reprisals +of an inquisition; Poe with his chaste, aerial loves, in which the +senses played no part, where only the mind functioned without +corresponding to organs which, if they existed, remained forever +frozen and virgin. This cerebral clinic where, vivisecting in a +stifling atmosphere, that spiritual surgeon became, as soon as his +attention flagged, a prey to an imagination which evoked, like +delicious miasmas, somnambulistic and angelic apparitions, was to Des +Esseintes a source of unwearying conjecture. But now that his nervous +disorders were augmented, days came when his readings broke his spirit +and when, hands trembling, body alert, like the desolate Usher he was +haunted by an unreasoning fear and a secret terror. + +Thus he was compelled to moderate his desires, and he rarely touched +these fearful elixirs, in the same way that he could no longer with +impunity visit his red corridor and grow ecstatic at the sight of the +gloomy Odilon Redon prints and the Jan Luyken horrors. And yet, when +he felt inclined to read, all literature seemed to him dull after +these terrible American imported philtres. Then he betook himself to +Villiers de L'Isle Adam in whose scattered works he noted seditious +observations and spasmodic vibrations, but which no longer gave one, +with the exception of his Claire Lenoir, such troubling horror. + +This Claire Lenoir which appeared in 1867 in the _Revue des lettres et +des arts_, opened a series of tales comprised under the title of +_Histoires Moroses_ where against a background of obscure speculations +borrowed from old Hegel, dislocated creatures stirred, Dr. Tribulat +Bonhomet, solemn and childish, a Claire Lenoir, farcical and sinister, +with blue spectacles, round and large as franc pieces, which covered +her almost dead eyes. + +This story centered about a simple adultery and ended with an +inexpressible terror when Bonhomet, opening Claire's eyelids, as she +lies in her death bed, and penetrating them with monstrous plummets, +distinctively perceives the reflection of the husband brandishing the +lover's decapitated head, while shouting a war song, like a Kanaka. + +Based on this more or less just observation that the eyes of certain +animals, cows for instance, preserve even to decomposition, like +photographic plates, the image of the beings and things their eyes +behold at the moment they expire, this story evidently derived from +Poe, from whom he appropriated the terrifying and elaborate technique. + +This also applied to the _Intersigne_, which had later been joined to +the _Contes cruels_, a collection of indisputable talent in which was +found _Vera_, which Des Esseintes considered a little masterpiece. + +Here, the hallucination was marked with an exquisite tenderness; no +longer was it the dark mirages of the American author, but the fluid, +warm, almost celestial vision; it was in an identical genre, the +reverse of the Beatrices and Legeias, those gloomy and dark phantoms +engendered by the inexorable nightmare of opium. + +This story also put in play the operations of the will, but it no +longer treated of its defeats and helplessness under the effects of +fear; on the contrary, it studied the exaltations of the will under +the impulse of a fixed idea; it demonstrated its power which often +succeeded in saturating the atmosphere and in imposing its qualities +on surrounding objects. + +Another book by Villiers de L'Isle Adam, _Isis_, seemed to him curious +in other respects. The philosophic medley of Clair Lenoir was evident +in this work which offered an unbelievable jumble of verbal and +troubled observations, souvenirs of old melodramas, poniards and rope +ladders--all the romanticism which Villiers de L'Isle Adam could never +rejuvenate in his _Elen_ and _Morgane_, forgotten pieces published by +an obscure man, Sieur Francisque Guyon. + +The heroine of this book, Marquise Tullia Fabriana, reputed to have +assimilated the Chaldean science of the women of Edgar Allen Poe, and +the diplomatic sagacities of Stendhal, had the enigmatic countenance +of Bradamante abused by an antique Circe. These insoluble mixtures +developed a fuliginous vapor across which philosophic and literary +influences jostled, without being able to be regulated in the author's +brain when he wrote the prolegomenae of this work which could not have +embraced less than seven volumes. + +But there was another side to Villiers' temperament. It was piercing +and acute in an altogether different sense--a side of forbidding +pleasantry and fierce raillery. No longer was it the paradoxical +mystifications of Poe, but a scoffing that had in it the lugubrious +and savage comedy which Swift possessed. A series of sketches, _les +Demoiselles de Bienfilatre_, _l'Affichage celeste_, _la Machine a +gloire_, and _le Plus beau diner du monde_, betrayed a singularly +inventive and keenly bantering mind. The whole order of contemporary +and utilitarian ideas, the whole commercialized baseness of the age +were glorified in stories whose poignant irony transported Des +Esseintes. + +No other French book had been written in this serious and bitter +style. At the most, a tale by Charles Cros, _La science de l'amour_, +printed long ago in the _Revue du Monde-Nouveau_, could astonish by +reason of its chemical whims, by its affected humor and by its coldly +facetious observations. But the pleasure to be extracted from the +story was merely relative, since its execution was a dismal failure. +The firm, colored and often original style of Villiers had disappeared +to give way to a mixture scraped on the literary bench of the +first-comer. + +"Heavens! heavens! how few books are really worth re-reading," sighed +Des Esseintes, gazing at the servant who left the stool on which he +had been perched, to permit Des Esseintes to survey his books with a +single glance. + +Des Esseintes nodded his head. But two small books remained on the +table. With a sigh, he dismissed the old man, and turned over the +leaves of a volume bound in onager skin which had been glazed by a +hydraulic press and speckled with silver clouds. It was held together +by fly-leaves of old silk damask whose faint patterns held that charm +of faded things celebrated by Mallarme in an exquisite poem. + +These pages, numbering nine, had been extracted from copies of the two +first Parnassian books; it was printed on parchment paper and preceded +by this title: _Quelques vers de Mallarme_, designed in a surprising +calligraphy in uncial letters, illuminated and relieved with gold, as +in old manuscripts. + +Among the eleven poems brought together in these covers, several +invited him: _Les fenetres_, _l'epilogue_ and _Azur_; but one among +them all, a fragment of the _Herodiade_, held him at certain hours in +a spell. + +How often, beneath the lamp that threw a low light on the silent +chamber, had he not felt himself haunted by this Herodiade who, in the +work of Gustave Moreau, was now plunged in gloom revealing but a dim +white statue in a brazier extinguished by stones. + +The darkness concealed the blood, the reflections and the golds, hid +the temple's farther sides, drowned the supernumeraries of the crime +enshrouded in their dead colors, and, only sparing the aquerelle +whites, revealed the woman's jewels and heightened her nudity. + +At such times he was forced to gaze upon her unforgotten outlines; and +she lived for him, her lips articulating those bizarre and delicate +lines which Mallarme makes her utter: + + O miroir! + Eau froide par l'ennui dans ton cadre + gelee + Que de fois, et pendant les heures, + desolee + Des songes et cherchant mes souvenirs + qui sont + Comme des feuilles sous ta glace au + trou profond, + Je m'apparus en toi comme une ombre + lointaine! + Mais, horreur! des soirs, dans ta + severe fontaine, + J'ai de mon reve epars connu la nudite! + +These lines he loved, as he loved the works of this poet who, in an +age of democracy devoted to lucre, lived his solitary and literary +life sheltered by his disdain from the encompassing stupidity, +delighting, far from society, in the surprises of the intellect, in +cerebral visions, refining on subtle ideas, grafting Byzantine +delicacies upon them, perpetuating them in suggestions lightly +connected by an almost imperceptible thread. + +These twisted and precious ideas were bound together with an adhesive +and secret language full of phrase contractions, ellipses and bold +tropes. + +Perceiving the remotest analogies, with a single term which by an +effect of similitude at once gave the form, the perfume, the color and +the quality, he described the object or being to which otherwise he +would have been compelled to place numerous and different epithets so +as to disengage all their facets and nuances, had he simply contented +himself with indicating the technical name. Thus he succeeded in +dispensing with the comparison, which formed in the reader's mind by +analogy as soon as the symbol was understood. Neither was the +attention of the reader diverted by the enumeration of the qualities +which the juxtaposition of adjectives would have induced. +Concentrating upon a single word, he produced, as for a picture, the +ensemble, a unique and complete aspect. + +It became a concentrated literature, an essential unity, a sublimate +of art. This style was at first employed with restraint in his earlier +works, but Mallarme had boldly proclaimed it in a verse on Theophile +Gautier and in _l'Apres-midi du faune_, an eclogue where the +subtleties of sensual joys are described in mysterious and caressing +verses suddenly pierced by this wild, rending faun cry: + + Alors m'eveillerai-je a la ferveur + premiere, + Droit et seul sous un flot antique de + lumiere, + Lys! et l'un de vous tous pour + l'ingenuite. + +That line with the monosyllable _lys_ like a sprig, evoked the image +of something rigid, slender and white; it rhymed with the substantive +_ingenuite_, allegorically expressing, by a single term, the passion, +the effervescence, the fugitive mood of a virgin faun amorously +distracted by the sight of nymphs. + +In this extraordinary poem, surprising and unthought of images leaped +up at the end of each line, when the poet described the elations and +regrets of the faun contemplating, at the edge of a fen, the tufts of +reeds still preserving, in its transitory mould, the form made by the +naiades who had occupied it. + +Then, Des Esseintes also experienced insidious delights in touching +this diminutive book whose cover of Japan vellum, as white as curdled +milk, were held together by two silk bands, one of Chinese rose, the +other of black. + +Hidden behind the cover, the black band rejoined the rose which rested +like a touch of modern Japanese paint or like a lascivious adjutant +against the antique white, against the candid carnation tint of the +book, and enlaced it, united its sombre color with the light color +into a light rosette. It insinuated a faint warning of that regret, a +vague menace of that sadness which succeeds the ended transports and +the calmed excitements of the senses. + +Des Esseintes placed _l'Apres-midi du faune_ on the table and examined +another little book he had printed, an anthology of prose poems, a +tiny chapel, placed under the invocation of Baudelaire and opening on +the parvise of his poems. + +This anthology comprised a selection of _Gaspard de la nuit_ of that +fantastic Aloysius Bertrand who had transferred the behavior of +Leonard in prose and, with his metallic oxydes, painted little +pictures whose vivid colors sparkle like those of clear enamels. To +this, Des Esseintes had joined _le Vox populi_ of Villiers, a superb +piece of work in a hammered, golden style after the manner of Leconte +de Lisle and of Flaubert, and some selections from that delicate +_livre de Jade_ whose exotic perfume of ginseng and of tea blends with +the odorous freshness of water babbling along the book, under +moonlight. + +But in this collection had been gathered certain poems resurrected +from defunct reviews: _le Demon de l'analogie_, _la Pipe_, _le Pauvre +enfant pale_, _le Spectacle interrompu_, _le Phenomene futur_, and +especially _Plaintes d'automne_ and _Frisson d'hiver_ which were +Mallarme's masterpieces and were also celebrated among the +masterpieces of prose poems, for they united such a magnificently +delicate language that they cradled, like a melancholy incantation or +a maddening melody, thoughts of an irresistible suggestiveness, +pulsations of the soul of a sensitive person whose excited nerves +vibrate with a keenness which penetrates ravishingly and induces a +sadness. + +Of all the forms of literature, that of the prose poem was the form +Des Esseintes preferred. Handled by an alchemist of genius, it +contained in its slender volume the strength of the novel whose +analytic developments and descriptive redundancies it suppressed. +Quite often, Des Esseintes had meditated on that disquieting +problem--to write a novel concentrated in a few phrases which should +contain the essence of hundreds of pages always employed to establish +the setting, to sketch the characters, and to pile up observations and +minute details. Then the chosen words would be so unexchangeable that +they would do duty for many others, the adjective placed in such an +ingenious and definite fashion that it could not be displaced, opening +such perspectives that the reader could dream for whole weeks on its +sense at once precise and complex, could record the present, +reconstruct the past, divine the future of the souls of the +characters, revealed by the gleams of this unique epithet. + +Thus conceived and condensed in a page or two, the novel could become +a communion of thought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a +spiritual collaboration agreed to between ten superior persons +scattered throughout the universe, a delight offered to the refined, +and accessible to them alone. + +To Des Esseintes, the prose poem represented the concrete juice of +literature, the essential oil of art. + +That succulence, developed and concentrated into a drop, already +existed in Baudelaire and in those poems of Mallarme which he read +with such deep joy. + +When he had closed his anthology, Des Esseintes told himself that his +books which had ended on this last book, would probably never have +anything added to it. + +In fact, the decadence of a literature, irreparably affected in its +organism, enfeebled by old ideas, exhausted by excesses of syntax, +sensitive only to the curiosities which make sick persons feverish, +and yet intent upon expressing everything in its decline, eager to +repair all the omissions of enjoyment, to bequeath the most subtle +memories of grief in its death bed, was incarnate in Mallarme, in the +most perfect exquisite manner imaginable. + +Here were the quintessences of Baudelaire and of Poe; here were their +fine and powerful substances distilled and disengaging new flavors and +intoxications. + +It was the agony of the old language which, after having become moldy +from age to age, ended by dissolving, by reaching that deliquescence +of the Latin language which expired in the mysterious concepts and the +enigmatical expressions of Saint Boniface and Saint Adhelme. + +The decomposition of the French language had been effected suddenly. +In the Latin language, a long transition, a distance of four hundred +years existed between the spotted and superb epithet of Claudian and +Rutilius and the gamy epithet of the eighth century. In the French +language, no lapse of time, no succession of ages had taken place; the +stained and superb style of the de Goncourts and the gamy style of +Verlaine and Mallarme jostled in Paris, living in the same period, +epoch and century. + +And Des Esseintes, gazing at one of the folios opened on his chapel +desk, smiled at the thought that the moment would soon come when an +erudite scholar would prepare for the decadence of the French language +a glossary similar to that in which the savant, Du Cange, has noted +the last murmurings, the last spasms, the last flashes of the Latin +language dying of old age in the cloisters and sounding its death +rattle. + + + + + Chapter 15 + + +Burning at first like a rick on fire, his enthusiasm for the digester +as quickly died out. Torpid at first, his nervous dyspepsia +reappeared, and then this hot essence induced such an irritation in +his stomach that Des Esseintes was quickly compelled to stop using it. + +The malady increased in strength; peculiar symptoms attended it. After +the nightmares, hallucinations of smell, pains in the eye and deep +coughing which recurred with clock-like regularity, after the pounding +of his heart and arteries and the cold perspiration, arose illusions +of hearing, those alterations which only reveal themselves in the last +period of sickness. + +Attacked by a strong fever, Des Esseintes suddenly heard murmurings of +water; then those sounds united into one and resembled a roaring which +increased and then slowly resolved itself into a silvery bell sound. + +He felt his delirious brain whirling in musical waves, engulfed in the +mystic whirlwinds of his infancy. The songs learned at the Jesuits +reappeared, bringing with them pictures of the school and the chapel +where they had resounded, driving their hallucinations to the +olfactory and visual organs, veiling them with clouds of incense and +the pallid light irradiating through the stained-glass windows, under +the lofty arches. + +At the Fathers, the religious ceremonies had been practiced with great +pomp. An excellent organist and remarkable singing director made an +artistic delight of these spiritual exercises that were conducive to +worship. The organist was in love with the old masters and on holidays +celebrated masses by Palestrina and Orlando Lasso, psalms by Marcello, +oratorios by Handel, motets by Bach; he preferred to render the sweet +and facile compilations of Father Lambillotte so much favored by +priests, the "Laudi Spirituali" of the sixteenth century whose +sacerdotal beauty had often bewitched Des Esseintes. + +But he particularly extracted ineffable pleasures while listening to +the plain-chant which the organist had preserved regardless of new +ideas. + +That form which was now considered a decrepit and Gothic form of +Christian liturgy, an archaeological curiosity, a relic of ancient +time, had been the voice of the early Church, the soul of the Middle +Age. It was the eternal prayer that had been sung and modulated in +harmony with the soul's transports, the enduring hymn uplifted for +centuries to the Almighty. + +That traditional melody was the only one which, with its strong +unison, its solemn and massive harmonies, like freestone, was not out +of place with the old basilicas, making eloquent the Romanesque +vaults, whose emanation and very spirit they seemed to be. + +How often had Des Esseintes not thrilled under its spell, when the +"Christus factus est" of the Gregorian chant rose from the nave whose +pillars seemed to tremble among the rolling clouds from censers, or +when the "De Profundis" was sung, sad and mournful as a suppressed +sob, poignant as a despairing invocation of humanity bewailing its +mortal destiny and imploring the tender forgiveness of its Savior! + +All religious music seemed profane to him compared with that +magnificent chant created by the genius of the Church, anonymous as +the organ whose inventor is unknown. At bottom, in the works of +Jomelli and Porpora, Carissimi and Durante, in the most wonderful +compositions of Handel and Bach, there was never a hint of a +renunciation of public success, or the sacrifice of an effect of art, +or the abdication of human pride hearkening to its own prayer. + +At the most, the religious style, august and solemn, had crystallized +in Lesueur's imposing masses celebrated at Saint-Roch, tending to +approach the severe nudity and austere majesty of the old plain-chant. + +Since then, absolutely revolted by these pretexts at _Stabat Maters_ +devised by the Pergolesis and the Rossinis, by this intrusion of +profane art in liturgic art, Des Esseintes had shunned those ambiguous +works tolerated by the indulgent Church. + +In addition, this weakness brought about by the desire for large +congregations had quickly resulted in the adoption of songs borrowed +from Italian operas, of low cavatinas and indecent quadrilles played +in churches converted to boudoirs and surrendered to stage actors +whose voices resounded aloft, their impurity tainting the tones of the +holy organ. + +For years he had obstinately refused to take part in these pious +entertainments, contenting himself with his memories of childhood. He +even regretted having heard the _Te Deum_ of the great masters, for he +remembered that admirable plain-chant, that hymn so simple and solemn +composed by some unknown saint, a Saint Ambrose or Hilary who, lacking +the complicated resources of an orchestra and the musical mechanics of +modern science, revealed an ardent faith, a delirious jubilation, +uttered, from the soul of humanity, in the piercing and almost +celestial accents of conviction. + +Des Esseintes' ideas on music were in flagrant contradiction with the +theories he professed regarding the other arts. In religious music, he +approved only of the monastic music of the Middle Ages, that emaciated +music which instinctively reacted on his nerves like certain pages of +the old Christian Latin. Then (he freely confessed it) he was +incapable of understanding the tricks that the contemporary masters +had introduced into Catholic art. And he had not studied music with +that passion which had led him towards painting and letters. He played +indifferently on the piano and after many painful attempts had +succeeded in reading a score, but he was ignorant of harmony, of the +technique needed really to understand a nuance, to appreciate a +finesse, to savor a refinement with full comprehension. + +In other respects, when not read in solitude, profane music is a +promiscuous art. To enjoy music, one must become part of that public +which fills the theatres where, in a vile atmosphere, one perceives a +loutish-looking man butchering episodes from Wagner, to the huge +delight of the ignorant mob. + +He had always lacked the courage to plunge in this mob-bath so as to +listen to Berlioz' compositions, several fragments of which had +bewitched him by their passionate exaltations and their vigorous +fugues, and he was certain that there was not one single scene, not +even a phrase of one of the operas of the amazing Wagner which could +with impunity be detached from its whole. + +The fragments, cut and served on the plate of a concert, lost all +significance and remained senseless, since (like the chapters of a +book, completing each other and moving to an inevitable conclusion) +Wagner's melodies were necessary to sketch the characters, to +incarnate their thoughts and to express their apparent or secret +motives. He knew that their ingenious and persistent returns were +understood only by the auditors who followed the subject from the +beginning and gradually beheld the characters in relief, in a setting +from which they could not be removed without dying, like branches torn +from a tree. + +That was why he felt that, among the vulgar herd of melomaniacs +enthusing each Sunday on benches, scarcely any knew the score that was +being massacred, when the ushers consented to be silent and permit the +orchestra to be heard. + +Granted also that intelligent patriotism forbade a French theatre to +give a Wagnerian opera, the only thing left to the curious who know +nothing of musical arcana and either cannot or will not betake +themselves to Bayreuth, is to remain at home. And that was precisely +the course of conduct he had pursued. + +The more public and facile music and the independent pieces of the old +operas hardly interested him; the wretched trills of Auber and +Boieldieu, of Adam and Flotow and the rhetorical commonplaces of +Ambroise Thomas and the Bazins disgusted him as did the superannuated +affectations and vulgar graces of Italians. That was why he had +resolutely broken with musical art, and during the years of his +abstention, he pleasurably recalled only certain programs of chamber +music when he had heard Beethoven, and especially Schumann and +Schubert which had affected his nerves in the same manner as had the +more intimate and troubling poems of Edgar Allen Poe. + +Some of Schubert's parts for violoncello had positively left him +panting, in the grip of hysteria. But it was particularly Schubert's +lieders that had immeasurably excited him, causing him to experience +similar sensations as after a waste of nervous fluid, or a mystic +dissipation of the soul. + +This music penetrated and drove back an infinity of forgotten +sufferings and spleen in his heart. He was astonished at being able to +contain so many dim miseries and vague griefs. This desolate music, +crying from the inmost depths, terrified while charming him. Never +could he repeat the "Young Girl's Lament" without a welling of tears +in his eyes, for in this plaint resided something beyond a mere +broken-hearted state; something in it clutched him, something like a +romance ending in a gloomy landscape. + +And always, when these exquisite, sad plaints returned to his lips, +there was evoked for him a suburban, flinty and gloomy site where a +succession of silent bent persons, harassed by life, filed past into +the twilight, while, steeped in bitterness and overflowing with +disgust, he felt himself solitary in this dejected landscape, struck +by an inexpressibly melancholy and stubborn distress whose mysterious +intensity excluded all consolation, pity and repose. Like a +funeral-knell, this despairing chant haunted him, now that he was in +bed, prostrated by fever and agitated by an anxiety so much the more +inappeasable for the fact that he could not discover its cause. He +ended by abandoning himself to the torrent of anguishes suddenly +dammed by the chant of psalms slowly rising in his tortured head. + +One morning, nevertheless, he felt more tranquil and requested the +servant to bring a looking-glass. It fell from his hands. He hardly +recognized himself. His face was a clay color, the lips bloated and +dry, the tongue parched, the skin rough. His hair and beard, untended +since his illness by the domestic, added to the horror of the sunken +face and staring eyes burning with feverish intensity in this skeleton +head that bristled with hair. More than his weakness, more than his +vomitings which began with each attempt at taking nourishment, more +than his emaciation, did his changed visage terrify him. He felt lost. +Then, in the dejection which overcame him, a sudden energy forced him +in a sitting posture. He had strength to write a letter to his Paris +physician and to order the servant to depart instantly, seek and bring +him back that very day. + +He passed suddenly from complete depression into boundless hope. This +physician was a celebrated specialist, a doctor renowned for his cures +of nervous maladies "He must have cured many more dangerous cases than +mine," Des Esseintes reflected. "I shall certainly be on my feet in a +few days." Disenchantment succeeded his confidence. Learned and +intuitive though they be, physicians know absolutely nothing of +neurotic diseases, being ignorant of their origins. Like the others, +this one would prescribe the eternal oxyde of zinc and quinine, +bromide of potassium and valerian. He had recourse to another thought: +"If these remedies have availed me little in the past, could it not be +due to the fact that I have not taken the right quantities?" + +In spite of everything, this expectation of being cured cheered him, +but then a new fear entered. His servant might have failed to find the +physician. Again he grew faint, passing instantly from the most +unreasoning hopes to the most baseless fears, exaggerating the chances +of a sudden recovery and his apprehensions of danger. The hours passed +and the moment came when, in utter despair and convinced that the +physician would not arrive, he angrily told himself that he certainly +would have been saved, had he acted sooner. Then his rage against the +servant and the physician whom he accused of permitting him to die, +vanished, and he ended by reproaching himself for having waited so +long before seeking aid, persuading himself that he would now be +wholly cured had he that very last evening used the medicine. + +Little by little, these alternations of hope and alarms jostling in +his poor head, abated. The struggles ended by crushing him, and he +relapsed into exhausted sleep interrupted by incoherent dreams, a sort +of syncope pierced by awakenings in which he was barely conscious of +anything. He had reached such a state where he lost all idea of +desires and fears, and he was stupefied, experiencing neither +astonishment or joy, when the physician suddenly arrived. + +The doctor had doubtless been apprised by the servant of Des +Esseintes' mode of living and of the various symptoms observed since +the day when the master of the house had been found near the window, +overwhelmed by the violence of perfumes. He put very few questions to +the patient whom he had known for many years. He felt his pulse and +attentively studied the urine where certain white spots revealed one +of the determining causes of nervousness. He wrote a prescription and +left without saying more than that he would soon return. + +This visit comforted Des Esseintes who none the less was frightened by +the taciturnity observed; he adjured his servant not to conceal the +truth from him any longer. But the servant declared that the doctor +had exhibited no uneasiness, and despite his suspicions, Des Esseintes +could seize upon no sign that might betray a shadow of a lie on the +tranquil countenance of the old man. + +Then his thoughts began to obsess him less; his suffering disappeared +and to the exhaustion he had felt throughout his members was grafted a +certain indescribable languor. He was astonished and satisfied not to +be weighted with drugs and vials, and a faint smile played on his lips +when the servant brought a nourishing injection of peptone and told +him he was to take it three times every twenty-four hours. + +The operation succeeded and Des Esseintes could not forbear to +congratulate himself on this event which in a manner crowned the +existence he had created. His penchant towards the artificial had now, +though involuntarily, reached the supreme goal. + +Farther one could not go. The nourishment thus absorbed was the +ultimate deviation one could possibly commit. + +"How delicious it would be" he reflected, "to continue this simple +regime in complete health! What economy of time, what a pronounced +deliverance from the aversion which food gives those who lack +appetite! What a complete riddance from the disgust induced by food +forcibly eaten! What an energetic protestation against the vile sin of +gluttony, what a positive insult hurled at old nature whose monotonous +demands would thus be avoided." + +And he continued, talking to himself half-aloud. One could easily +stimulate desire for food by swallowing a strong aperitif. After the +question, "what time is it getting to be? I am famished," one would +move to the table and place the instrument on the cloth, and then, in +the time it takes to say grace, one could have suppressed the tiresome +and vulgar demands of the body. + +Several days afterwards, the servant presented an injection whose +color and odor differed from the other. + +"But it is not the same at all!" Des Esseintes cried, gazing with deep +feeling at the liquid poured into the apparatus. As if in a +restaurant, he asked for the card, and unfolding the physician's +prescription, read: + + Cod Liver Oil . . . . . . . . 20 grammes + Beef Tea . . . . . . . . . . 200 grammes + Burgundy Wine . . . . . . . . 200 grammes + Yolk of one egg. + +He remained meditative. He who by reason of the weakened state of his +stomach had never seriously preoccupied himself with the art of the +cuisine, was surprised to find himself thinking of combinations to +please an artificial epicure. Then a strange idea crossed his brain. +Perhaps the physician had imagined that the strange palate of his +patient was fatigued by the taste of the peptone; perhaps he had +wished, like a clever chef, to vary the taste of foods and to prevent +the monotony of dishes that might lead to want of appetite. Once in +the wake of these reflections, Des Esseintes sketched new recipes, +preparing vegetable dinners for Fridays, using the dose of cod liver +oil and wine, dismissing the beef tea as a meat food specially +prohibited by the Church. But he had no occasion longer to ruminate on +these nourishing drinks, for the physician succeeded gradually in +curing the vomiting attacks, and he was soon swallowing, in the normal +manner, a syrup of punch containing a pulverized meat whose faint +aroma of cacao pleased his palate. + +Weeks passed before his stomach decided to function. The nausea +returned at certain moments, but these attacks were disposed of by +ginger ale and Rivieres' antiemetic drink. + +Finally the organs were restored. Meats were digested with the aid of +pepsines. Recovering strength, he was able to stand up and attempt to +walk, leaning on a cane and supporting himself on the furniture. +Instead of being thankful over his success, he forgot his past pains, +grew irritated at the length of time needed for convalescence and +reproached the doctor for not effecting a more rapid cure. + +At last the day came when he could remain standing for whole +afternoons. Then his study irritated him. Certain blemishes it +possessed, and which habit had accustomed him to overlook, now were +apparent. The colors chosen to be seen by lamp-light seemed discordant +in full day. He thought of changing them and for whole hours he +combined rebellious harmonies of hues, hybrid pairings of cloth and +leathers. + +"I am certainly on the road to recovery," he reflected, taking note of +his old hobbies. + +One morning, while contemplating his orange and blue walls, +considering some ideal tapestries worked with stoles of the Greek +Church, dreaming of Russian orphrey dalmaticas and brocaded copes +flowered with Slavonic letters done in Ural stones and rows of pearls, +the physician entered and, noticing the patient's eyes, questioned +him. + +Des Esseintes spoke of his unrealizable longings. He commenced to +contrive new color schemes, to talk of harmonies and discords of tones +he meant to produce, when the doctor stunned him by peremptorily +announcing that these projects would never be executed here. + +And, without giving him time to catch breath, he informed Des +Esseintes that he had done his utmost in re-establishing the digestive +functions and that now it was necessary to attack the neurosis which +was by no means cured and which would necessitate years of diet and +care. He added that before attempting a cure, before commencing any +hydrotherapic treatment, impossible of execution at Fontenay, Des +Esseintes must quit that solitude, return to Paris, and live an +ordinary mode of existence by amusing himself like others. + +"But the pleasures of others will not amuse me," Des Esseintes +indignantly cried. + +Without debating the matter, the doctor merely asserted that this +radical change was, in his eyes, a question of life or death, a +question of health or insanity possibly complicated in the near future +by tuberculosis. + +"So it is a choice between death and the hulks!" Des Esseintes +exasperatedly exclaimed. + +The doctor, who was imbued with all the prejudices of a man of the +world, smiled and reached the door without saying a word. + + + + + Chapter 16 + + +Des Esseintes locked himself up in his bedroom, closing his ears to +the sounds of hammers on packing cases. Each stroke rent his heart, +drove a sorrow into his flesh. The physician's order was being +fulfilled; the fear of once more submitting to the pains he had +endured, the fear of a frightful agony had acted more powerfully on +Des Esseintes than the hatred of the detestable existence to which the +medical order condemned him. + +Yet he told himself there were people who live without conversing with +anyone, absorbed far from the world in their own affairs, like +recluses and trappists, and there is nothing to prove that these +wretches and sages become madmen or consumptives. He had +unsuccessfully cited these examples to the doctor; the latter had +repeated, coldly and firmly, in a tone that admitted of no reply, that +his verdict, (confirmed besides by consultation with all the experts +on neurosis) was that distraction, amusement, pleasure alone might +make an impression on this malady whose spiritual side eluded all +remedy; and made impatient by the recriminations of his patient, he +for the last time declared that he would refuse to continue treating +him if he did not consent to a change of air, and live under new +hygienic conditions. + +Des Esseintes had instantly betaken himself to Paris, had consulted +other specialists, had impartially put the case before them. All +having unhesitatingly approved of the action of their colleague, he +had rented an apartment in a new house, had returned to Fontenay and, +white with rage, had given orders to have his trunks packed. + +Sunk in his easy chair, he now ruminated upon that unyielding order +which was wrecking his plans, breaking the strings of his present life +and overturning his future plans. His beatitude was ended. He was +compelled to abandon this sheltering haven and return at full speed +into the stupidity which had once attacked him. + +The physicians spoke of amusement and distraction. With whom, and with +what did they wish him to distract and amuse himself? + +Had he not banished himself from society? Did he know a single person +whose existence would approximate his in seclusion and contemplation? +Did he know a man capable of appreciating the fineness of a phrase, +the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea,--a man whose +soul was delicate and exquisite enough to understand Mallarme and love +Verlaine? + +Where and when must he search to discover a twin spirit, a soul +detached from commonplaces, blessing silence as a benefit, ingratitude +as a solace, contempt as a refuge and port? + +In the world where he had dwelt before his departure for Fontenay? But +most of the county squires he had associated with must since have +stultified themselves near card tables or ended upon the lips of +women; most by this time must have married; after having enjoyed, +during their life, the spoils of cads, their spouses now possessed the +remains of strumpets, for, master of first-fruits, the people alone +waste nothing. + +"A pretty change--this custom adopted by a prudish society!" Des +Esseintes reflected. + +The nobility had died, the aristocracy had marched to imbecility or +ordure! It was extinguished in the corruption of its descendants whose +faculties grew weaker with each generation and ended in the instincts +of gorillas fermented in the brains of grooms and jockeys; or rather, +as with the Choiseul-Praslins, Polignacs and Chevreuses, wallowed in +the mud of lawsuits which made it equal the other classes in +turpitude. + +The mansions themselves, the secular escutcheons, the heraldic +deportment of this antique caste had disappeared. The land no longer +yielding anything was put up for sale, money being needed to procure +the venereal witchcraft for the besotted descendants of the old races. + +The less scrupulous and stupid threw aside all sense of shame. They +weltered in the mire of fraud and deceit, behaved like cheap sharpers. + +This eagerness for gain, this lust for lucre had even reacted on that +other class which had constantly supported itself on the nobility--the +clergy. Now one perceived, in newspapers, announcements of corn cures +by priests. The monasteries had changed into apothecary or liqueur +workrooms. They sold recipes or manufactured products: the Citeaux +order, chocolate; the trappists, semolina; the Maristes Brothers, +biphosphate of medicinal lime and arquebuse water; the jacobins, an +anti-apoplectic elixir; the disciples of Saint Benoit, benedictine; +the friars of Saint Bruno, chartreuse. + +Business had invaded the cloisters where, in place of antiphonaries, +heavy ledgers reposed on reading-desks. Like leprosy, the avidity of +the age was ravaging the Church, weighing down the monks with +inventories and invoices. + +And yet, in spite of everything, it was only among the ecclesiastics +that Des Esseintes could hope for pleasurable contract. In the society +of well-bred and learned canons, he would have been compelled to share +their faith, to refrain from floating between sceptical ideas and +transports of conviction which rose from time to time on the water, +sustained by recollections of childhood. + +He would have had to muster identical opinions and never admit (he +freely did in his ardent moments) a Catholicism charged with a soupcon +of magic, as under Henry the Third, and with a dash of sadism, as at +the end of the last century. This special clericalism, this depraved +and artistically perverse mysticism towards which he wended could not +even be discussed with a priest who would not have understood them or +who would have banished them with horror. + +For the twentieth time, this irresolvable problem troubled him. He +would have desired an end to this irresolute state in which he +floundered. Now that he was pursuing a changed life, he would have +liked to possess faith, to incrust it as soon as seized, to screw it +into his soul, to shield it finally from all those reflections which +uprooted and agitated it. But the more he desired it and the less his +emptiness of spirit was evident, the more Christ's visitation receded. +As his religious hunger augmented and he gazed eagerly at this faith +visible but so far off that the distance terrified him, ideas pressed +upon his active mind, driving back his will, rejecting, by common +sense and mathematical proofs, the mysteries and dogmas. He sadly told +himself that he would have to find a way to abstain from +self-discussion. He would have to learn how to close his eyes and let +himself be swept along by the current, forgetting those accursed +discoveries which have destroyed the religious edifice, from top to +bottom, since the last two centuries. + +He sighed. It is neither the physiologists nor the infidels that +demolish Catholicism, but the priests, whose stupid works could +extirpate convictions the most steadfast. + +A Dominican friar, Rouard de Card, had proved in a brochure entitled +"On the Adulteration of Sacramental Substances" that most masses were +not valid, because the elements used for worship had been adulterated +by the manufacturers. + +For years, the holy oils had been adulterated with chicken fat; wax, +with burned bones; incense, with cheap resin and benzoin. But the +thing that was worse was that the substances, indispensable to the +holy sacrifice, the two substances without which no oblation is +possible, had also been debased: the wine, by numerous dilutions and +by illicit introductions of Pernambuco wood, danewort berries, alcohol +and alum; the bread of the Eucharist that must be kneaded with the +fine flour of wheat, by kidney beans, potash and pipe clay. + +But they had gone even farther. They had dared suppress the wheat and +shameless dealers were making almost all the Host with the fecula of +potatoes. + +Now, God refused to descend into the fecula. It was an undeniable fact +and a certain one. In the second volume of his treatise on moral +theology, Cardinal Gousset had dwelt at length on this question of the +fraud practiced from the divine point of view. And, according to the +incontestable authority of this master, one could not consecrate bread +made of flour of oats, buckwheat or barley, and if the matter of using +rye be less doubtful, no argument was possible in regard to the fecula +which, according to the ecclesiastic expression, was in no way fit for +sacramental purposes. + +By means of the rapid manipulation of the fecula and the beautiful +appearance presented by the unleavened breads created with this +element, the shameless imposture had been so propagated that now the +mystery of the transubstantiation hardly existed any longer and the +priests and faithful were holding communion, without being aware of +it, with neutral elements. + +Ah! far off was the time when Radegonda, Queen of France, had with her +own hands prepared the bread destined for the alters, or the time +when, after the customs of Cluny, three priests or deacons, fasting +and garbed in alb and amice, washed their faces and hands and then +picked out the wheat, grain by grain, grinding it under millstone, +kneading the paste in a cold and pure water and themselves baking it +under a clear fire, while chanting psalms. + +"All this matter of eternal dupery," Des Esseintes reflected, "is not +conducive to the steadying of my already weakened faith. And how admit +that omnipotence which stops at such a trifle as a pinch of fecula or +a soupcon of alcohol?" + +These reflections all the more threw a gloom over the view of his +future life and rendered his horizon more menacing and dark. + +He was lost, utterly lost. What would become of him in this Paris +where he had neither family nor friends? No bond united him to the +Saint-Germain quarters now in its dotage, scaling into the dust of +desuetude, buried in a new society like an empty husk. And what +contact could exist between him and that bourgeois class which had +gradually climbed up, profiting by all the disasters to grow rich, +making use of all the catastrophes to impose respect on its crimes and +thefts. + +After the aristocracy of birth had come the aristocracy of money. Now +one saw the reign of the caliphates of commerce, the despotism of the +rue du Sentier, the tyranny of trade, bringing in its train venal +narrow ideas, knavish and vain instincts. + +Viler and more dishonest than the nobility despoiled and the decayed +clergy, the bourgeoisie borrowed their frivolous ostentations, their +braggadoccio, degrading these qualities by its lack of _savoir-vivre_; +the bourgeoisie stole their faults and converted them into +hypocritical vices. And, authoritative and sly, low and cowardly, it +pitilessly attacked its eternal and necessary dupe, the populace, +unmuzzled and placed in ambush so as to be in readiness to assault the +old castes. + +It was now an acknowledged fact. Its task once terminated, the +proletariat had been bled, supposedly as a measure of hygiene. The +bourgeoisie, reassured, strutted about in good humor, thanks to its +wealth and the contagion of its stupidity. The result of its accession +to power had been the destruction of all intelligence, the negation of +all honesty, the death of all art, and, in fact, the debased artists +had fallen on their knees, and they eagerly kissed the dirty feet of +the eminent jobbers and low satraps whose alms permitted them to live. + +In painting, one now beheld a deluge of silliness; in literature, an +intemperate mixture of dull style and cowardly ideas, for they had to +credit the business man with honesty, the buccaneer who purchased a +dot for his son and refused to pay that of his daughter, with virtue; +chaste love to the Voltairian agnostic who accused the clergy of rapes +and then went hypocritically and stupidly to sniff, in the obscene +chambers. + +It was the great American hulks transported to our continent. It was +the immense, the profound, the incommensurable peasantry of the +financier and the parvenu, beaming, like a pitiful sun, upon the +idolatrous town which wallowed on the ground the while it uttered +impure psalms before the impious tabernacle of banks. + +"Well, then, society, crash to ruin! Die, aged world!" cried Des +Esseintes, angered by the ignominy of the spectacle he had evoked. +This cry of hate broke the nightmare that oppressed him. + +"Ah!" he exclaimed, "To think that all this is not a dream, to think +that I am going to return into the cowardly and servile crowd of this +century!" To console himself, he recalled the comforting maxims of +Schopenhauer, and repeated to himself the sad axiom of Pascal: "The +soul is pained by all things it thinks upon." But the words resounded +in his mind like sounds deprived of sense; his ennui disintegrated, +lifting all significance from the words, all healing virtue, all +effective and gentle vigor. + +He came at last to perceive that the reasonings of pessimism availed +little in comforting him, that impossible faith in a future life alone +would pacify him. + +An access of rage swept aside, like a hurricane, his attempts at +resignation and indifference. He could no longer conceal the hideous +truth--nothing was left, all was in ruins. The bourgeoisie were +gormandizing on the solemn ruins of the Church which had become a +place of rendez-vous, a mass of rubbish, soiled by petty puns and +scandalous jests. Were the terrible God of Genesis and the Pale Christ +of Golgotha not going to prove their existence by commanding the +cataclysms of yore, by rekindling the flames that once consumed the +sinful cities? Was this degradation to continue to flow and cover with +its pestilence the old world planted with seeds of iniquities and +shames? + +The door was suddenly opened. Clean-shaved men appeared, bringing +chests and carrying the furniture; then the door closed once more on +the servant who was removing packages of books. + +Des Esseintes sank into a chair. + +"I shall be in Paris in two days. Well, all is finished. The waves of +human mediocrity rise to the sky and they will engulf the refuge whose +dams I open. Ah! courage leaves me, my heart breaks! O Lord, pity the +Christian who doubts, the sceptic who would believe, the convict of +life embarking alone in the night, under a sky no longer illumined by +the consoling beacons of ancient faith." + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Against The Grain, by Joris-Karl Huysmans + +[Transcriber's Note, to forestall future queries: + +This translation, as printed, omits two sections: chapter 6 entirely, +and a few paragraphs near the end of chapter 9 (totalling 2500 words, +or about 4%). + +In chapter 6, Des Esseintes is relaxing in a wing-chair in front of +the fire, remembering an event. One evening in the Rue de Rivoli he +had befriended a young man, taken him to an expensive brothel, and +paid for his entertainment. He had explained to the madam how he +planned to turn the innocent young man into a murderer: by paying for +regular visits and making him accustomed to a luxury he could not +afford, then after three months stopping all payment. To maintain his +habit, he would be driven to burglary, and perhaps kill someone who +happened upon him. Des Esseintes' reflections have only the regret +that he did not pursue his scheme closely enough to ensure its +success. + +Near the end of chapter 9, after musing upon the ventriloquist, Des +Esseintes recalls walking along the Avenue de Latour-Maubourg when he +was approached by a young man. He remembers this leading to an intense +relationship that he looks back upon with a disturbing ambivalence. + +Huysmans expressed antipathy to the moral content of these passages in +a postface of 1903. ] + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12341 *** |