 CHAPTER 1 OF AGAINST THE GRAIN AGAINST THE GRAIN by Joris-Karl Wiesmans Translated by John Howard CHAPTER 1 The Floressades Saint, to judge by the various portraits preserved in the Château de Lourg, had originally been a family of stalwart troopers and stern cavalrymen. 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 mustaches, 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 rough. In this representation of one of the most intimate friends of the Duc des Pernons and the Marquis d'Or, 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 desessant had intermarried for two centuries, using up in such consanguinous 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 Île de France and l'Abris. 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 atomistic reversion the last descendant resembled the old grand sire, 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 scroffula 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 langurs of chlorosis and reached his full development. His mother, a tall, pale, taciturn woman, died of anemia and his father of some uncertain malady. Désir Saint 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 Château de Louvre. 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 duchess 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 duke 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 Lourg 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 Gittigny, a village planted at the foot of the hills, a tiny heap of cottages capped with thatch, strewn with tufts of sen-green 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 Vousy. Sometimes he went as far as the peat-bogs to the green and black hamlet of Longaville or climbed windswept hillsides affording magnificent views. There, below to one side, as far as the eye could reach, lay the sen valley, blending in the distance with the blue sky. High up near the horizon on the other side rose the churches and tower of Provence, which seems 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 antagonise 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 whims seized him and although theology did not figure in his schedule he finished his apprenticeship in this science began at the Château de Lourg in the library bequeathed by his grand-uncle, Dom Prosper, the old prior of the regular cannons 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 Cont de Montchaverelle, 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 this is Saint sometimes visited the Montchaverelle family and spent some dull evenings in the Rue de la Cher's 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 wist-tables proved even more shallow and insignificant than the dowagers. These descendants of ancient courageous knights these last branches of feudal races appeared to desecente as catarel, 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 wainscotting 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 fobs, stupid boars 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 lice, were less hypocritical and much more courageous, and they were neither more interesting nor less bigoted. Gay young men dazzled by operettas and races, they played lanskene and bakarra, staked large fortunes on horses and cards, and cultivated all the pleasures enchanting to brainless fools. After a year's experience Dizisant felt an overpowering weariness of this company whose debauchery 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 judgements, 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 balder-dash retailed daily in the newspapers and would exaggerate the significance of the plaudits which a sovereign public always reserved for works deficient in ideas and style. Already he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless arc 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 pawled 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 surfited. 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 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 overexcited. Like those young girls who in the grip of puberty crave coarse and vile foods he dreamed of and practised 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 Lourg 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 50,000 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 the Fortoneo Halls in a secluded section near the fort far from any neighbours. His dream was realised. 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. End of chapter 1 Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 2 of Against the Grain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Geeson Against the Grain by Joris Karl Wiesmans translated by John Howard Chapter 2 More than two months passed before Desis Sainte could bury himself in the silent repose of his fontanet 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 colour-tones. In the days when he had entertained women at his home he had created a boudoir where a mid-daintily carved furniture of pale Japanese camphor wood and a sort of pavilion of Indian rose-tinted satin the flesh would colour 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 a 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 odour 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 colour to faces grown dull and withered by the use of serutes and by knights 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 Château de Lourg. Listening to the sound he had so often heard before he lived over again the silent evening 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 reverie 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 or tumble 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-coloured waltz in the days when he had deemed it necessary to affect singularity Desesante had designed marvellously 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 somber delicate or barbaric colours 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 matters of style threatening them with pecuniary excommunication if they failed to follow to the letter the instructions contained in his monetaries 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 18th 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 scabies 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 negrises 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 Frankfurt black pudding game with sauces that were the colour 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 Rossignon, Tenedos, Val de Peños and Porto and after the coffee and walnut brandy had partaken of crass 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 fontanet house was in readiness fitted up by an architect according to his plans when all that remained was to determine the colour scheme he again devoted himself to long speculations he desired colours 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 colours blue inclines to a false green by candlelight if it is dark like cobalt or indigo it turns black if it is bright it turns gray 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 colour iron gray always frowns and is heavy pearl gray 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 colours whose feminine associations oppose all ideas of isolation no need to consider the violet which is completely neutralised at night only the red in it holds its ground and what a red a viscous red like the lease of wine besides it seemed useless to employ this colour for by using a certain amount of santenin he could get an effect of violet on his hangings these colours disposed of only three remained red, orange, yellow of these he preferred orange thus by his own example confirming the truth of the 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 colour which most vividly impresses him disregarding entirely the generality of men whose gross retinas are capable of perceiving neither the cadence peculiar to each colour nor the mysterious charm of their nuances of light and shade ignoring the bourgeoisie whose eyes are insensible to the pomp and splendour 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 in dream of the ideal and demand illusions are generally caressed by blue and its derivatives mauve, lilac and pearl grey provided always that these colours remain soft and do not overstep the bounds where they lose their personalities by being transformed into pure violets and frank grays 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 symbols of the millions and chromes that blind and intoxicate them but the eyes of enfeebled and nervous persons whose sensual appetites craved highly seasoned foods the eyes of hectic and overexcited creatures have a predilection towards that irritating and morbid colour with its fictitious splendours its acid fevers orange thus there could be no question about Desi-San's 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 cheap 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 caped 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 coach-makers employ for carriage panels the ceiling, slightly rounded, was also lined with Morocco in the centre 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 outstretched 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 Dizisat 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 15th century counting table deep-arm chairs and an old chapel reading desk of forged iron one of those old lecterns on which the deacon formerly placed the antiphenary and which now supported one of the heavy folios of Ducange's Glossario Medae et Infi mai 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 monstresses of Byzantine style originally brought from the old Abbe Au Bois de Bievre stood a marvellous church cannon divided into three separate compartments delicately wrought like lacework it contained under its glass frame three works of Baudelaire copied on real vellum with wonderful missile 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 où hors du monde End of chapter 2 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 3 of Against the Grain This Librivox recording is in the public domain Recording by Martin Giesen Against the Grain by Georges-Carles Huismas Translated by John Howard Chapter 3 After selling his effects Désis Sainte retained the two old domestics who had tended his mother and filled the offices of Stuart and House Porter at the Château de Lourg 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 After the rigid silence of cloisteral monks who lived behind barbed 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 odour to filter into either of the two rooms it joined With its vaulted ceiling fitted with beams in a half circle with its bulkheads and floors of pine and the little window in the wainscotting 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 into 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 pine wood box and to penetrate into it The other was visible placed directly opposite the porthole built in the wainscotting 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 one and glassy all during the morning reddened like blazing gleams of embers and lapped restlessly against the light coloured wood Sometimes when it chanced that Desis Sainte 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 coloured liquids that made it green or brackish opaline or silvery tones similar to those of rivers which reflect the colour 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 marvellous mechanical fish wound like clocks which passed before the porthole or clung to the artificial seaweed While he inhaled the odour of tar introduced into the room shortly before his arrival he examined coloured engravings hung on the walls which represented just as at Lloyd's office in the steamship agencies steamers bound for Valparaiso and La Platt and looked at framed pictures on which were inscribed the itineraries of the Royal Mail steam packet the Lopez and the Valérie companies the freight and port calls of the Atlantic mail boats If he tired of consulting these guides he could rest his eyes 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 seal-skin The book was The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym specially printed for him on laid paper each sheet carefully selected with a seagull watermark or he could look at fishing rods tan-coloured 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 odour 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 a 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 sellers wines of capital taste manufactured from inferior brands treated by Pasteur's method for they have the same aroma the same colour 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 Vichier 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 magnesium 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 odours 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 Joan guide describing the beauties of the seashore where one would wish to be by being rocked on the waves made by the eddy of flyboats 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 Parc Royale 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, synced to Desi-Saint 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 weary to the considerate patience of Eastheats really what dullness the dullness of the specialist confined to his narrow work what manners, the manners of the tradesmen offering one particular wear 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 is scenic setting flooded with electricity cannot produce no waterfall which hydraulics cannot imitate to perfection no rock which paste-board cannot be made to resemble no flower which taffeters 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 metalsome among rapids and floods the other the engert is a nobly proportioned dusky brunette emitting raucous muffled cries her heavy loins are strangled in a cast-iron breastplate a monstrous beast with a dishevelled 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 cue of her match and dies 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 Desi Saint's reflections when the breeze brought him the faint whistle of the toy railroad winding playfully like a spinning top between Paris and Seoul his house was situated at a twenty minutes walk from the Fountain A station but the height on which it was perched its isolation made it immune to the clutter 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 Verrière Woods were trained in the darkness to left and right these masses dim and confused rose tear on tear dominated far off by other batteries and forts whose high embankments seemed in the moonlight bathed in silver against the somber sky where the plane 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 enamoured look and its artificial air the landscape did not displease Désir Saint 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, bewisquered bourgeois citizens and moustached uniformed men with heads of magistrates and soldiers which they held as stiffly as monstroses 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 crabid 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 windowpanes 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 clod-hoppers 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 apologising End of Chapter 3 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 4 of Against the Grain This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Martin Giesen Against the Grain Translated by John Howard 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 Desesante with its carefully premeditated style its sameness its stripping of supple syntax its poverty of colour 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 Catares the gentle Virgil whom instructors called the Mantu and Swan perhaps because he was not born in that city he considered one of the most terrible pedants ever produced by antiquity Desesante was exasperated by his immaculate and bedisand shepherds his Orpheus whom he compares to a weeping nightingale his Aristaeus who simpers about bees his Ineas that weak-willed, irresolute person who walks with wooden gestures through the length of the poem Desesante would gladly have accepted the tedious nonsense which those marionettes exchanged with each other offstage or even the poets impudent borrowings from Homer, Theocritus, Enneas and Lucretius the plain theft revealed to us by Macrobius of the second song of the Ineid copied almost word for word from one of Pissander'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 spondy 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 Virgil was quite restrained and his attraction for Ovid's lucid outpourings even more circumspect there was no limit to his disgust at the elefantine 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 harangs in the ponderousness of his style fleshy but ropey 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 salast who is less colorless than the others sentimental and pompous, tight as Livius turgid and lurid Seneca watery and larval Suetonius tacitus in his studied conciseness is the keenest most wiry and muscular of them all in poetry he was untouched by juvenile despite some rough shod verses and by Perseus despite his mysterious insinuations in neglecting tibullus and propersious quintillion and the plinis stacious, marshal even Terence and Plautus whose jargon full of neologisms compound words and diminutives could please him but whose low comedy and gross humour he loathed Desis Sainte only began to be interested in the Latin language with Lucan here it was liberated already more expressive and less dull this careful armour these verses plaited with enamel and studied with jewels captivated him but the exclusive preoccupation with form the sonorities of tone the clangour of metals did not entirely conceal from him the emptiness of the thought the turgidity of those blisters which embossed the skin of the farsalia 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 marvellous 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 satiricon 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 body-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 rug-ridden folding-beds impure sharpers like asculte and emolpe 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 colour 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 Argo of the streets the strangest, 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 analysing 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 civilisation of an empire that cracks struck Desisante 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 Planchiades Fulgentius which are forever lost but the bibliophile in him consoled the student when he touched with worshipful hands the superb addition of the satiricon which he possessed the octavo bearing the date 1585 and the name of J. Doussa of Leiden leaving Petronius his Latin collection entered into the second century of the Christian era passed over fronto the disclaimer with his antiquated terms skipped the attic knights of Aulus Galeus his disciple and friend a clever ferreting mind but a writer entangled in a glutinous vase and halted at Apuleus 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 colour 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 a soporific minutious phalix a pseudo-classicist pouring forth the still-thick emulsions of Cicero into his Octavius nay, even Tertullian whom he perhaps preserved for his Aldean 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 the Deculta 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 Ella Gabelos and he tranquilly prepared his sermons his dogmatic writings his pleadings, his homilies while the Roman Empire shook on its foundations while the follies of Asia while the audios of paganism were fall to the brim with the utmost sans foie 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 Ella Gabelos worked amid his eunuchs and womanish labour 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 Ciceroanian magniliquence but had not yet acquired that special flavour which in the fourth century and particularly during the centuries following the odour of Christianity would give the pagan tongue decomposed like old venison crumbling at the same time that old world civilisation collapsed and the empires putrified by the sanies of the centuries succumbed to the thrusts of the barbarians only one Christian poet, Comodianus represented the third century in his library the Carmen Apologeticum written in 259 is a collection of instructions twisted into acrostics in popular examitors 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 somber, tortuous, gamey 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 Amianus Marcellinus and Aurelius Victorus Simacus 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 Quento Nuptialis and his exuberant embellished Mocella 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 vapours 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 exameter 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 colours and passes with all his torches a light 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 soul master of art the new Christian spirit arose with Paulinus disciple of Ausonius Eugenius who paraphrases the gospels in verse Victorinus, author of the Maccabees Sanctus Bordigalensis who in an eclog imitated from Virgil makes his shepherds Aegon and Buculus lament the maladies of their flock and all the saints Ilerre of Poitiers defender of the Nicene faith the Athanasius of the Occident as he has been called Ambrosius, author of the indigestible homilies the wearisome Christian Cicero Damasus, maker of lapidary epigrams Jerome, translator of the Vulgate and his adversary Wigilantius 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 Augustin, bishop of Hippo Dizisand 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 assayed in the city of God to mitigate the frightful distress of the times by sedative promises of a rosier future When Dizisand had studied theology he was already sick and weary of the old monk's preachings and gerimiads his theories on predestination and grace his combats against the schisms He preferred to sum 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 interladed with flashes of wit, pungences, archaisms and enigmas allured him He willingly re-read the panegyrics in which this bishop invokes pagan deities in substantiation of his vanglorious eulogies and in spite of everything he confessed a weakness for the affectations of these verses fabricated as it were by an ingenious mecanician 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 Abyssederian hymns certain passages of which the church is appropriated for its services Marius Victorius whose gloomy treatise on the perversity of the times is illumined here and there with verses that gleam with osphorescence Paulinus of Pella poet of the shivering Eucharisticon and Orientius Bishop of Ush who in the districts of his monitories invades against the licentiousness of women whose faces he claims corrupt the people The interest which Desis Sainte 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 barbarian sacked Gaul Paralyzed Rome pillaged by the Visigoths felt its life grow feeble perceived its extremities the oxidant 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 clamours 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 raised Europe rushed towards Gaul and ran the plains of Chalon 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 thunder-claps against Italy 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 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 veins 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 dullly and coldly the African Dracontius with his hexamaran Claudius Memertius with his liturgical poetry Avitus of Vienne then the biographers like Inodius who narrates the prodigies of that perspicacious and venerated diplomat Saint Epiphanius the upright and vigilant pastor or like Eugipus 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 Viranius of Jevodin who prepared a little treatise on continents like Aurelianus and Pheraeolus who compiled the ecclesiastical canons historians like Crossarius famous for a lost history of the Huns Desessants library did not contain many works of the centuries immediately succeeding notwithstanding this deficiency the 6th century was represented by Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers whose hymns and Wexilaregis 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 Hernandez in the 7th and 8th centuries since, in addition to the low Latin of the chroniclers the Frederickers and the Poldiacs and the poems contained in the banger antiphinary which he sometimes read for the alphabetical and mono-rhymed hymn sung in honour of Saint Comgyl the literature limited itself almost exclusively to biographies of saints to the legend of Saint Columban the monk Jonas and to that of the Blessed Cuspert written by the venerable bead from the notes of an anonymous monk of Lindisfarne 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 Radigonda related 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 Adhelm, 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 Carlo Vingian Latinists the Alquins and the Aegon Hearts he contented himself as a specimen of the language of the 9th century with the chronicles of Saint Gal Freculfius and Regino with the poem of the Siege of Paris written by Abbe Le Corp with the didactic Ortuulus of the Benedictine Vallafrit Strabo whose chapter consecrated to the glory of the gored as a symbol of fruitfulness enlivened him with the poem in which Hermont the Dark celebrating the exploits of Louis the Devonère 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 unplyant metal with the De Wiribus er Barum 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 Aristologia for example which mixed with the flesh of a cow and placed on the lower part of a pregnant woman's abdomen ensures the birth of a male child or to the borage rude 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 cabala medicine and botany certain odd tomes containing undiscoverable Christian poetry and the unsolidgy of the minor Latin poets of Vernsdorf apart from Meursius the manual of classical erotology of Vorberg and the diaconals used by confessors which he dusted at rare intervals his Latin library ended at the beginning of the 10th century and in fact the curiosity the complicated naivete of the Christian language had also founded the balder-dash of philosophers and scholars the logomarchy of the middle ages Vernsdorf 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 teared the fabrications of verbs and purified essences of substantive 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 Deses Sainte here ended and with a formidable leap of centuries the books on his shelves led straight to the French language of the present century End of chapter 4 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey