He had always been passionately fond of flowers, but during his
residence at Jutigny, that love had been lavished upon flowers of all
sorts; he had never cultivated distinctions and discriminations in
regard to them. Now his taste in this direction had grown refined and
self-conscious.
For a long time he had scorned the popular plants which grow in flat
baskets, in watered pots, under green awnings or under the red
parasols of Parisian markets.
Simultaneous with the refinement of his literary taste and his
preoccupations with art, which permitted him to be content only in the
presence of choice creations, distilled by subtly troubled brains, and
simultaneous with the weariness he began to feel in the presence of
popular ideas, his love for flowers had grown purged of all impurities
and lees, and had become clarified.
He compared a florist's shop to a microcosm wherein all the categories
of society are represented. Here are poor common flowers, the kind
found in hovels, which are truly at home only when resting on ledges
of garret windows, their roots thrust into milk bottles and old pans,
like the gilly-flower for example.
And one also finds stupid and pretentious flowers like the rose which
belongs in the porcelain flowerpots painted by young girls.
Then, there are flowers of noble lineage like the orchid, so delicate
and charming, at once cold and palpitating, exotic flowers exiled in
the heated glass palaces of Paris, princesses of the vegetable kingdom
living in solitude, having absolutely nothing in common with the
street plants and other bourgeois flora.
He permitted himself to feel a certain interest and pity only for the
popular flowers enfeebled by their nearness to the odors of sinks and
drains in the poor quarters. In revenge he detested the bouquets
harmonizing with the cream and gold rooms of pretentious houses. For
the joy of his eyes he reserved those distinguished, rare blooms which
had been brought from distant lands and whose lives were sustained by
artful devices under artificial equators.
But this very choice, this predilection for the conservatory plants
had itself changed under the influence of his mode of thought.
Formerly, during his Parisian days, his love for artificiality had led
him to abandon real flowers and to use in their place replicas
faithfully executed by means of the miracles performed with India
rubber and wire, calico and taffeta, paper and silk. He was the
possessor of a marvelous collection of tropical plants, the result of
the labors of skilful artists who knew how to follow nature and
recreate her step by step, taking the flower as a bud, leading it to
its full development, even imitating its decline, reaching such a
point of perfection as to convey every nuance--the most fugitive
expressions of the flower when it opens at dawn and closes at evening,
observing the appearance of the petals curled by the wind or rumpled
by the rain, applying dew drops of gum on its matutinal corollas;
shaping it in full bloom, when the branches bend under the burden of
their sap, or showing the dried stem and shrivelled cupules, when
calyxes are thrown off and leaves fall to the ground.
This wonderful art had held him entranced for a long while, but now he
was dreaming of another experiment.
He wished to go one step beyond. Instead of artificial flowers
imitating real flowers, natural flowers should mimic the artificial
ones.
He directed his ideas to this end and had not to seek long or go far,
since his house lay in the very heart of a famous horticultural
region. He visited the conservatories of the Avenue de Chatillon and
of the Aunay valley, and returned exhausted, his purse empty,
astonished at the strange forms of vegetation he had seen, thinking of
nothing but the species he had acquired and continually haunted by
memories of magnificent and fantastic plants.
The flowers came several days later.
Des Esseintes holding a list in his hands, verified each one of his
purchases. The gardeners from their wagons brought a collection of
caladiums which sustained enormous heartshaped leaves on turgid hairy
stalks; while preserving an air of relationship with its neighbor, no
one leaf repeated the same pattern.
Others were equally extraordinary. The roses like the _Virginale_
seemed cut out of varnished cloth or oil-silks; the white ones, like
the _Albano_, appeared to have been cut out of an ox's transparent
pleura, or the diaphanous bladder of a pig. Some, particularly the
_Madame Mame_, imitated zinc and parodied pieces of stamped metal
having a hue of emperor green, stained by drops of oil paint and by
spots of white and red lead; others like the _Bosphorous_, gave the
illusion of a starched calico in crimson and myrtle green; still
others, like the _Aurora Borealis_, displayed leaves having the color
of raw meat, streaked with purple sides, violet fibrils, tumefied
leaves from which oozed blue wine and blood.
The _Albano_ and the _Aurora_ sounded the two extreme notes of
temperament, the apoplexy and chlorosis of this plant.
The gardeners brought still other varieties which had the appearance
of artificial skin ridged with false veins, and most of them looked as
though consumed by syphilis and leprosy, for they exhibited livid
surfaces of flesh veined with scarlet rash and damasked with
eruptions. Some had the deep red hue of scars that have just closed or
the dark tint of incipient scabs. Others were marked with matter
raised by scaldings. There were forms which exhibited shaggy skins
hollowed by ulcers and relieved by cankers. And a few appeared
embossed with wounds, covered with black mercurial hog lard, with
green unguents of belladonna smeared with grains of dust and the
yellow micas of iodoforme.
Collected in his home, these flowers seemed to Des Esseintes more
monstrous than when he had beheld them, confused with others among the
glass rooms of the conservatory.
"_Sapristi!_" he exclaimed enthusiastically.
A new plant, modelled like the Caladiums, the _Alocasia Metallica_,
excited him even more. It was coated with a layer of bronze green on
which glanced silver reflections. It was the masterpiece of
artificiality. It could be called a piece of stove pipe, cut by a
chimney-maker into the form of a pike head.
The men next brought clusters of leaves, lozenge-like in shape and
bottle-green in color. In the center rose a rod at whose end a
varnished ace of hearts swayed. As though meaning to defy all
conceivable forms of plants, a fleshy stalk climbed through the heart
of this intense vermilion ace--a stalk that in some specimens was
straight, in others showed ringlets like a pig's tail.
It was the _Anthurium_, an aroid recently imported into France from
Columbia; a variety of that family to which also belonged an
_Amorphophallus_, a Cochin China plant with leaves shaped like
fish-knives, with long dark stems seamed with gashes, like lambs
flecked with black.
Des Esseintes exulted.
They brought a new batch of monstrosities from the wagon:
_Echinopses_, issuing from padded compresses with rose-colored flowers
that looked like the pitiful stumps; gaping _Nidularia_ revealing
skinless foundations in steel plates; _Tillandsia Lindeni_, the color
of wine must, with jagged scrapers; _Cypripedia_, with complicated
contours, a crazy piece of work seemingly designed by a crazy
inventor. They looked like sabots or like a lady's work-table on which
lies a human tongue with taut filaments, such as one sees designed on
the illustrated pages of works treating of the diseases of the throat
and mouth; two little side-pieces, of a red jujube color, which
appeared to have been borrowed from a child's toy mill completed this
singular collection of a tongue's underside with the color of slate
and wine lees, and of a glossy pocket from whose lining oozed a
viscous glue.
He could not remove his eyes from this unnatural orchid which had been
brought from India. Then the gardeners, impatient at his
procrastinations, themselves began to read the labels fastened to the
pots they were carrying in.
Bewildered, Des Esseintes looked on and listened to the cacophonous
sounds of the names: the _Encephalartos horridus_, a gigantic iron
rust-colored artichoke, like those put on portals of chateaux to foil
wall climbers; the _Cocos Micania_, a sort of notched and slender palm
surrounded by tall leaves resembling paddles and oars; the _Zamia
Lehmanni_, an immense pineapple, a wondrous Chester leaf, planted in
sweet-heather soil, its top bristling with barbed javelins and jagged
arrows; the _Cibotium Spectabile_, surpassing the others by the
craziness of its structure, hurling a defiance to revery, as it
darted, through the palmated foliage, an enormous orang-outang tail, a
hairy dark tail whose end was twisted into the shape of a bishop's
cross.
But he gave little heed, for he was impatiently awaiting the series of
plants which most bewitched him, the vegetable ghouls, the carnivorous
plants; the _Antilles Fly-Trap_, with its shaggy border, secreting a
digestive liquid, armed with crooked prickles coiling around each
other, forming a grating about the imprisoned insect; the _Drosera_ of
the peat-bogs, provided with glandular hair; the _Sarracena_ and the
_Cephalothus_, opening greedy horns capable of digesting and absorbing
real meat; lastly, the _Nepenthes_, whose capricious appearance
transcends all limits of eccentric forms.
He never wearied of turning in his hands the pot in which this floral
extravagance stirred. It imitated the gum-tree whose long leaf of dark
metallic green it possessed, but it differed in that a green string
hung from the end of its leaf, an umbilic cord supporting a greenish
urn, streaked with jasper, a sort of German porcelain pipe, a strange
bird's nest which tranquilly swung about, revealing an interior
covered with hair.
"This is really something worth while," Des Esseintes murmured.
He was forced to tear himself away, for the gardeners, anxious to
leave, were emptying the wagons of their contents and depositing,
without any semblance of order, the tuberous _Begonias_ and black
_Crotons_ stained like sheet iron with Saturn red.
Then he perceived that one name still remained on his list. It was the
_Cattleya_ of New Granada. On it was designed a little winged bell of
a faded lilac, an almost dead mauve. He approached, placed his nose
above the plant and quickly recoiled. It exhaled an odor of toy boxes
of painted pine; it recalled the horrors of a New Year's Day.
He felt that he would do well to mistrust it and he almost regretted
having admitted, among the scentless plants, this orchid which evoked
the most disagreeable memories.
As soon as he was alone his gaze took in this vegetable tide which
foamed in the vestibule. Intermingled with each other, they crossed
their swords, their krisses and stanchions, taking on a resemblance to
a green pile of arms, above which, like barbaric penons, floated
flowers with hard dazzling colors.
The air of the room grew rarefied. Then, in the shadowy dimness of a
corner, near the floor, a white soft light crept.
He approached and perceived that the phenomenon came from the
_Rhizomorphes_ which threw out these night-lamp gleams while
respiring.
"These plants are amazing," he reflected. Then he drew back to let his
eye encompass the whole collection at a glance. His purpose was
achieved. Not one single specimen seemed real; the cloth, paper,
porcelain and metal seemed to have been loaned by man to nature to
enable her to create her monstrosities. When unable to imitate man's
handiwork, nature had been reduced to copying the inner membranes of
animals, to borrowing the vivid tints of their rotting flesh, their
magnificent corruptions.
"All is syphilis," thought Des Esseintes, his eye riveted upon the
horrible streaked stainings of the Caladium plants caressed by a ray
of light. And he beheld a sudden vision of humanity consumed through
the centuries by the virus of this disease. Since the world's
beginnings, every single creature had, from sire to son, transmitted
the imperishable heritage, the eternal malady which has ravaged man's
ancestors and whose effects are visible even in the bones of old
fossils that have been exhumed.
The disease had swept on through the centuries gaining momentum. It
even raged today, concealed in obscure sufferings, dissimulated under
symptoms of headaches and bronchitis, hysterics and gout. It crept to
the surface from time to time, preferably attacking the ill-nourished
and the poverty stricken, spotting faces with gold pieces, ironically
decorating the faces of poor wretches, stamping the mark of money on
their skins to aggravate their unhappiness.
And here on the colored leaves of the plants it was resurgent in its
original splendor.
"It is true," pursued Des Esseintes, returning to the course of
reasoning he had momentarily abandoned, "it is true that most often
nature, left alone, is incapable of begetting such perverse and sickly
specimens. She furnishes the original substance, the germ and the
earth, the nourishing womb and the elements of the plant which man
then sets up, models, paints, and sculpts as he wills. Limited,
stubborn and formless though she be, nature has at last been subjected
and her master has succeeded in changing, through chemical reaction,
the earth's substances, in using combinations which had been long
matured, cross-fertilization processes long prepared, in making use of
slips and graftings, and man now forces differently colored flowers in
the same species, invests new tones for her, modifies to his will the
long-standing form of her plants, polishes the rough clods, puts an
end to the period of botch work, places his stamp on them, imposes on
them the mark of his own unique art."
"It cannot be gainsaid," he thought, resuming his reflections, "that
man in several years is able to effect a selection which slothful
nature can produce only after centuries. Decidedly the horticulturists
are the real artists nowadays."
He was a little tired and he felt stifled in this atmosphere of
crowded plants. The promenades he had taken during the last few days
had exhausted him. The transition had been too sudden from the tepid
atmosphere of his room to the out-of-doors, from the placid
tranquillity of a reclusive life to an active one. He left the
vestibule and stretched out on his bed to rest, but, absorbed by this
new fancy of his, his mind, even in his sleep, could not lessen its
tension and he was soon wandering among the gloomy insanities of a
nightmare.
He found himself in the center of a walk, in the heart of the wood;
twilight had fallen. He was strolling by the side of a woman whom he
had never seen before. She was emaciated and had flaxen hair, a
bulldog face, freckles on her cheeks, crooked teeth projecting under a
flat nose. She wore a nurse's white apron, a long neckerchief, torn in
strips on her bosom; half-shoes like those worn by Prussian soldiers
and a black bonnet adorned with frillings and trimmed with a rosette.
There was a foreign look about her, like that of a mountebank at a
fair.
He asked himself who the woman could be; he felt that she had long
been an intimate part of his life; vainly he sought her origin, her
name, her profession, her reason for being. No recollection of this
liaison, which was inexplicable and yet positive, rewarded him.
He was searching his past for a clue, when a strange figure suddenly
appeared on horse-back before them, trotting about for a moment and
then turning around in its saddle. Des Esseintes' heart almost stopped
beating and he stood riveted to the spot with horror. He nearly
fainted. This enigmatic, sexless figure was green; through her violet
eyelids the eyes were terrible in their cold blue; pimples surrounded
her mouth; horribly emaciated, skeleton arms bared to the elbows
issued from ragged tattered sleeves and trembled feverishly; and the
skinny legs shivered in shoes that were several sizes too large.
The ghastly eyes were fixed on Des Esseintes, penetrating him,
freezing his very marrow; wilder than ever, the bulldog woman threw
herself at him and commenced to howl like a dog at the killing, her
head hanging on her rigid neck.
Suddenly he understood the meaning of the frightful vision. Before him
was the image of Syphilis.
Pursued by fear and quite beside himself, he sped down a pathway at
top speed and gained a pavillion standing among the laburnums to the
left, where he fell into a chair, in the passage way.
After a few moments, when he was beginning to recover his breath, the
sound of sobbing made him lift his head. The bulldog woman was in
front of him and, grotesque and woeful, while warm tears fell from her
eyes, she told him that she had lost her teeth in her flight. As she
spoke she drew clay pipes from the pocket of her nurse's apron,
breaking them and shoving pieces of the stems into the hollows of her
gums.
"But she is really absurd," Des Esseintes told himself. "These stems
will never stick." And, as a matter of fact, they dropped out one
after another.
At this moment were heard the galloping sounds of an approaching
horse. A fearful terror pierced Des Esseintes. His limbs gave way. The
galloping grew louder. Despair brought him sharply to his senses. He
threw himself upon the woman who was stamping on the pipe bowls,
entreating her to be silent, not to give notice of their presence by
the sound of her shoes. She writhed and struggled in his grip; he led
her to the end of the corridor, strangling her to prevent her from
crying out. Suddenly he noticed the door of a coffee house, with green
Venetian shutters. It was unlocked; he pushed it, rushed in headlong
and then paused.
Before him, in the center of a vast glade, huge white pierrots were
leaping rabbit-like under the rays of the moon.
Tears of discouragement welled to his eyes; never, no never would he
succeed in crossing the threshold. "I shall be crushed," he thought.
And as though to justify his fears, the ranks of tall pierrots swarmed
and multiplied; their somersaults now covered the entire horizon, the
whole sky on which they landed now on their heads, now on their feet.
Then the hoof beats paused. He was in the passage, behind a round
skylight. More dead than alive, Des Esseintes turned about and through
the round window beheld projecting erect ears, yellow teeth, nostrils
from which breathed two jets of vapor smelling of phenol.
He sank to the ground, renouncing all ideas of flight or of
resistance. He closed his eyes so as not to behold the horrible gaze
of Syphilis which penetrated through the wall, which even pierced his
closed lids, which he felt gliding over his moist spine, over his body
whose hair bristled in pools of cold sweat. He waited for the worst
and even hoped for the _coup de grace_ to end everything. A moment
which seemed to last a century passed. Shuddering, he opened his eyes.
Everything had vanished. Without any transition, as though by some
stage device, a frightful mineral landscape receded into the distance,
a wan, dead, waste, gullied landscape. A light illumined this desolate
site, a peaceful white light that recalled gleams of phosphorus
dissolved in oil.
Something that stirred on the ground became a deathly pale, nude woman
whose feet were covered with green silk stockings.
He contemplated her with curiosity. As though frizzed by overheated
irons, her hair curled, becoming straight again at the end; her
distended nostrils were the color of roast veal. Her eyes were
desirous, and she called to him in low tones.
He had no time to answer, for already the woman was changing.
Flamboyant colors passed and repassed in her eyes. Her lips were
stained with a furious Anthurium red. The nipples of her breasts
flashed, painted like two pods of red pepper.
A sudden intuition came to him. "It is the Flower," he said. And his
reasoning mania persisted in his nightmare.
Then he observed the frightful irritation of the breasts and mouth,
discovered spots of bister and copper on the skin of her body, and
recoiled bewildered. But the woman's eyes fascinated him and he
advanced slowly, attempting to thrust his heels into the earth so as
not to move, letting himself fall, and yet lifting himself to reach
her. Just as he touched her, the dark _Amorphophalli_ leaped up from
all sides and thrust their leaves into his abdomen which rose and fell
like a sea. He had broken all the plants, experiencing a limitless
disgust in seeing these warm, firm stems stirring in his hands.
Suddenly the detested plants had disappeared and two arms sought to
enlace him. A terrible anguish made his heart beat furiously, for the
eyes, the horrible eyes of the woman, had become a clear, cold and
terrible blue. He made a superhuman effort to free himself from her
embrace, but she held him with an irresistible movement. He beheld the
wild _Nidularium_ which yawned, bleeding, in steel plates.
With his body he touched the hideous wound of this plant. He felt
himself dying, awoke with a start, suffocating, frozen, mad with fear
and sighing: "Ah! thank God, it was but a dream!"