 5 The afternoon was drawing to its close when a carriage halted in front of the Fontenay house. Since Dizisante 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 peephole 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 pine-wood 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 Dizisante 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 a laden yellow, it suddenly occurred to him how much it would be improved if he could place on it some object whose deep colour 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 lacklustre 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 to 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 Dizzy Sant was enchanted with this effect. Then he reflected that this gigantic jewel was only in outline, but it would not really be complete until it had been encrusted 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, rootilent flames. But they remind one of the green and red antennae of certain omnibuses which carry signal lights of these colours. 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 Desisante 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 chrysoberrules of asparagus green. The chrysolights of leak green. The oliveines of olive green. They hung from branches of almondine and uvarovite 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 waved that oriental turquoise used for broaches and rings, which, like the banal pearl and the odious coral, serves to delight people of no importance. He chose occidental turquoise 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, cymophones 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 gray, streaked with concentric veins, which seemed 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 Desisante. 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 compostel hyacinth, mahogany red. The burial, glaucus green. The ballas ruby, vinegar rose. The pseudomanian 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. Desisante 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 resplendences of the flaming corollae 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 shafayun, moyutan, and hanski, 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 whorefrost, like melted sugar, scintillating in the stumps of bottles spotted with gold. A deep silence enveloped the cottage, drooping in shadow. Desi Saint fell into reverie. 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 colour 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 into one of the panels was a closet containing a number of tiny casks, ranged side by side, and resting on small stands of sandalwood. 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. Daisy-Sant 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 Curacao, for example, to the clarinet, whose tone is sourish and velvety. Cummel to the oboe whose sonorous notes snuffle. Mint and anisette to the flute, at once sugary and peppery, peeling and sweet. While to complete the orchestra, Kirchschwasser has the furious ring of the trumpet. Gin and whisky burn the palette with their strident crashings of trombones and cornets. Brandy storms with the deafening hubbub of tubers, while the thunder-claps of the cymbals and the furiously beaten drum roll in the mouth by means of the raqui of Chios. He also thought that the comparison could be continued, that quartets of string instruments could play under the palette, 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 liqueurs. 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 Chartres. 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 palette real pieces of music, following the composer step by step, rendering his thought, his effects, his nuances, by combinations or contrasts of liqueurs, by approximative and skilled mixtures. At other times he himself composed melodies, executed pastorals with mild black current which evoked in his throat the trillings of nightingales, with the tender chuvah-coco which sang saccharine songs like the romance of Estelle and the ah shall I tell you mamma of past days. But on this evening Desis Sainte 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 whisky. 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 palette, fitted its progress to the flavour of the whisky, reawakened by a fatal exactitude of odours, memories effaced for years. This carboid 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 reverie 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, or had to make an appointment. He told himself that this would never do, that he could not endure it. He decided to patronise 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 unequaled rapidity. There the office 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 key, he rushed through the streets, holding his cheek, with his hands repressing the tears. Arrived in front of the house, recognisable by an immense wooden signboard, where the name of Gatonax sprawled in enormous pumpkin-coloured letters, and by two little glass cases where false teeth were carefully set in rose-coloured 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, an in-entered, a terrible grenadier dressed in a frock coat and black trousers. Desessant 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 mustaches, he took an instrument from the table. Then the play began. Clinging to the arms of his seat, Desessant 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. Brusky 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, Desessant 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 rutulent cope with which it had been covered, the jewels with which its back had been paved, like a pics. End of chapter five. Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmeyer Surrey. Chapter six of Against the Grain. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen. Against the Grain by Joris Karl Wiesmans. Translated by John Howard. Chapter six. 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 distaste or regrets, but a desire 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, Gustav Moho. Dizisant had acquired his two masterpieces, and at night used to sink into reverie before one of them, a representation of Salome, conceived in this fashion. A throne, resembling the high altar of a cathedral, reared itself behind innumerable vaults, leaping from heavy Romanesque pillars, studded with polychromatic bricks, set with mosaics, encrusted with lapis lazuli and sardonyx. In a palace that, like a basilica, was at once Mohammedan and Byzantine in design. In the centre of the tabernacle, surmounting an altar approached by semicircular 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 colour 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 orfrey robe, fitting tightly over his breast. Around this form, frozen into the immobile, saccadotal, hieratic pose of a Hindu 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 vapour 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 odour 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 tearo's. Its jewels, like splendid insects with dazzling elitra, feigned 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 goods under his orange-checkered tunic. This conception of Salome, so haunting to artists and poets, had obsessed Desi Saint for years. How often had he read in the Old Bible of Pierre Barrichet, 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 reverie 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 what soever 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 then which sat with him at meet, 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 evangelist had emphasised 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 murderous. In Gustav Morro's work, conceived independently of the testament themes, this is Saint at last saw realised the superhuman and exotic salome of his dreams. She was no longer the mere performer who rests 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 a cursed 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 this 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 Salambo Boor, placing in her hand the scepter of Isis, the tall lotus, sacred flower of Egypt and India. Disessent 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 the kundity, the Hindu 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 to 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 watercolor 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 marketry crept rainbow gleams and prismatic flames. The murder was accomplished, the executioner stood impassive, his hands on the hilt of his long bloodstained sword. The severed head of the saint stared lividly on the charger, resting on the slabs. The mouth was discoloured and open, the neck crimson and tears fell from the eyes. The face was encircled by an orial worked in mosaic which shot rays of light under the porticoes, 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 ardour of the dance her veils had become loosened. She is garbed only in gold wrought stuffs and limpid stones. A neckpiece clasps her as a corslet does the body, and like a superb buckle a marvellous 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. The millions like coals, violets like jets of gas, blues like flames of alcohol, and whites like starlight. The horrible head blazes, bleeding constantly, clots of somber 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 odours, steeped in barms, exuding incense and myrrh. Like the old king, Desis Sainte 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, dizzyed by the whirlwind of the dance, hypnotised and petrified by terror. It was here that she was indeed woman, for here she gave reign to her ardent and cruel temperament. She was living more refined and savage, more execrable and exquisite. She more energetically awakened the dull 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 hot houses. Desis Sainte thought that never before had a water-colour attained such magnificent colouring. Never before had the poverty of colours been able to force jewelled coruscations from paper, gleams like stained-glass windows touched by rays of sunlight, splendours 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 splendour of these cruel visions and the enchanting sublimation of past ages. Desis Sainte 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 colours of Dullacois. 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 marvellous strokes from the art of limousins, its most exquisite refinements from the art of the lapidary and the engraver. These two pictures of Salome, for which Desi Sainte's 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 Onay 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 Onay Valley and faced the towers of Quoi 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 Desi-Saint less distinctly. The dressing-room was tapestryed in deep red. On the walls, in ebony frames, hung the prints of Yann Lowken, 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, chappaned with nails and gashed with sores, intestines separated from the abdomen and twisted on spools, fingernails 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 odours of burning, oozing with blood and clamorous with cries of horror and maledictions, gave Desi-Saint, 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 the dexterity which recalled Calhoun, 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 Dragonade, 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 Desi-Saint in passing many a day when his books failed to charm him. Laucan'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, endeavouring 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 Bredin'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, peepled with monkeys and owls, covered with old stumps as misshapen as the roots of the mandrake. Then a magical forest, cut in the centre, near a glade through which a stream can be seen far away, behind a camel and the Samaritan group. Then an elf in 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 durrard, with an opium-steeped brain. But although he liked the finesse of the detail and the imposing appearance of this print, Desessant had a special weakness for the other frames adorning the room. They were signed Odiland Redon. They enclosed inconceivable apparitions in their rough, gold-striped pear-tree wood. Ahead 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 the dream terrors. Here an enormous dye 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, beatling 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 mammoths, 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 caruffs, induced in desescent 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 Allan Poe's tales, whose mirages of hallucination and effects of fear, Odilan 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 disc 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 colour 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 Desi Saint 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 Kahn's style was inevitable for the vestidious, 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 blonde, with its clear and lively décor, 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 rouets, leering at the false chastity and hypocritical modesty of Gros's tender virgins, at the deceptive candour 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 somber 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 simulate the chocolate hue of the dadoes common to this type of room, he used pieces of violet wood deepened with amorins. The effect was bewitching. While recalling to Desi Saint the repellent 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 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 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 Desi Saint 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 elbreco, whose barbaric colour 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 cloisteral 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 merit it 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. End of Chapter 6 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 7 of Against the Grain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen Against the Grain by Joris Karl Wiesmans Translated by John Howard 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 Desisante 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 willpower, and invoked a cortège 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, moved 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-coloured 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 auteur, 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 commitment 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 fair, 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, cheating 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 moulding 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 weedling 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 La Cordaire so skillfully wrote to his former pupils of Sorres. Desis Sainte took note of this system which had been so fruitlessly expended on him. His stubborn, captures 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 Lice 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 La Cardaire, 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 is 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. Inveloped 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, Desis Saint mused, as he reasoned the matter and followed the progress of this introduction of the Jesuitic spirit into fontanet. 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 pixies with their chaste sides. Even in aluminium and imitation enamels and coloured 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 marvellous fabrics and jewellery which the makers of sacred objects spoiled 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 secondhand 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 marvellous, which, in turn, 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, ecstasies, 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 I am arguing with myself, like a very casuist. He was left pensive, agitated by a vague fear. Certainly, if Lacarder's theory was 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 romances 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 Deses Sainte. 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 apostices of Father Labé, 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 Utiches 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 hypothesis 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 splitings, 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 penitence 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 Romanos, evoked entire pages of livious, 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 penitence 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 plain 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 sacrilegies 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 desecrate 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 without rages and saturating them in oprobrium. 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 picks covers, and this idea of a state of sin imparted to him a mixed sensation of pride and relief. The pleasures of sacrilege were unraveled from the skein of this idea, but these were debatable sacrilegies 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, emphasising 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 offences, its vicissitudes and pains. Thus the church grew truly eloquent, the beneficent mother of the oppressed, the eternal menace of oppressors and despots. Here Dizis Sainte was on firm ground. He was thoroughly satisfied with this admission of social order, 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, reigns 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 where the evangelical farmer appears? 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 this ascent 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 ringing 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 hydrotherapy treatments for his trembling fingers, frightful pains, neurologic 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 wracked 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 asafetida, balearion 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 realising a project he had long deferred through laziness and dislike of change since his instalment 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 colours of style which he was for the time to lose from his literary diet.