These nightmares attacked him repeatedly. He was afraid to fall
asleep. For hours he remained stretched on his bed, now a prey to
feverish and agitated wakefulness, now in the grip of oppressive
dreams in which he tumbled down flights of stairs and felt himself
sinking, powerless, into abysmal depths.
His nervous attacks, which had abated for several days, became acute,
more violent and obstinate than ever, unearthing new tortures.
The bed covers tormented him. He stifled under the sheets, his body
smarted and tingled as though stung by swarms of insects. These
symptoms were augmented by a dull pain in his jaws and a throbbing in
his temples which seemed to be gripped in a vise.
His alarm increased; but unfortunately the means of subduing the
inexorable malady were not at hand. He had unsuccessfully sought to
install a hydropathic apparatus in his dressing room. But the
impossibility of forcing water to the height on which his house was
perched, and the difficulty of procuring water even in the village
where the fountains functioned sparingly and only at certain hours of
the day, caused him to renounce the project. Since he could not have
floods of water playing on him from the nozzle of a hose, (the only
efficacious means of overcoming his insomnia and calming his nerves
through its action on his spinal column) he was reduced to brief
sprays or to mere cold baths, followed by energetic massages applied
by his servant with the aid of a horse-hair glove.
But these measures failed to stem the march of his nervous disorder.
At best they afforded him a few hours' relief, dearly paid for by the
return of the attacks in an even more virulent form.
His ennui passed all bounds. His pleasure in the possession of his
wonderful flowers was exhausted. Their textures and nuances palled on
him. Besides, despite the care he lavished on them, most of his plants
drooped. He had them removed from his rooms, but in his state of
extreme excitability, their very absence exasperated him, for his eyes
were pained by the void.
To while away the interminable hours, he had recourse to his
portfolios of prints, and arranged his Goyas. The first impressions of
certain plates of the _Caprices_, recognizable as proofs by their
reddish hues, which he had bought at auction at a high price,
comforted him, and he lost himself in them, following the painter's
fantasies, distracted by his vertiginous scenes, his witches astride
on cats, his women striving to pluck out the teeth of a hanged man,
his bandits, his succubi, his demons and dwarfs.
Then he examined his other series of etchings and aquatints, his
_Proverbs_ with their macabre horror, his war subjects with their wild
rage, finally his plate of the Garot, of which he cherished a
marvelous trial proof, printed on heavy water-marked paper, unmounted.
Goya's savage verve and keenly fanciful talent delighted him, but the
universal admiration his works had won nevertheless estranged him
slightly. And for years he had refused to frame them for fear that the
first blundering fool who caught sight of them might deem it necessary
to fly into banal and facile raptures before them.
The same applied to his Rembrandts which he examined from time to
time, half secretly; and if it be true that the loveliest tune
imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public
begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own, the work of
art which does not remain indifferent to the spurious artists, which
is not contested by fools, and which is not satisfied with awakening
the enthusiasm of the few, by this very fact becomes profaned, trite,
almost repulsive to the initiate.
This promiscuity in admiration, furthermore, was one of the greatest
sources of regret in his life. Incomprehensible successes had forever
spoiled for him many pictures and books once cherished and dear.
Approved by the mob, they began to reveal imperceptible defects to
him, and he rejected them, wondering meanwhile if his perceptions were
not growing blunted.
He closed his portfolios and, completely disconcerted, again plunged
into melancholy. To divert the current of his thoughts and cool his
brain, he sought books that would soothe him and turned to the
romances of Dickens, those charming novels which are so satisfying to
invalids and convalescents who might grow fatigued by works of a more
profound and vigorous nature.
But they produced an effect contrary to his expectations. These chaste
lovers, these protesting heroines garbed to the neck, loved among the
stars, confined themselves to lowered eyes and blushes, wept tears of
joy and clasped hands--an exaggeration of purity which threw him into
an opposite excess. By the law of contrast, he leaped from one extreme
to the other, let his imagination dwell on vibrant scenes between
human lovers, and mused on their sensual kisses and passionate
embraces.
His mind wandered off from his book to worlds far removed from the
English prude: to wanton peccadilloes and salacious practices
condemned by the Church. He grew excited. The impotence of his mind
and body which he had supposed final, vanished. Solitude again acted
on his disordered nerves; he was once more obsessed, not by religion
itself, but by the acts and sins it forbids, by the subject of all its
obsecrations and threats. The carnal side, atrophied for months, which
had been stirred by the enervation of his pious readings, then brought
to a crisis by the English cant, came to the surface. His stimulated
senses carried him back to the past and he wallowed in memories of his
old sin.
He rose and pensively opened a little box of vermeil with a lid of
aventurine.
It was filled with violet bonbons. He took one up and pressed it
between his fingers, thinking of the strange properties of this
sugary, frosted sweetmeat. When his virility had been impaired, when
the thought of woman had roused in him no sharp regret or desire, he
had only to put one in his mouth, let it melt, and almost at once it
induced misty, languishing memories, infinitely tender.
These bonbons invented by Siraudin and bearing the ridiculous name of
"Perles des Pyrenees" were each a drop of sarcanthus perfume, a drop
of feminine essence crystallized in a morsel of sugar. They penetrated
the papillae of the tongue, recalling the very savor of voluptuous
kisses.
Usually he smiled as he inhaled this love aroma, this shadow of a
caress which for a moment restored the delights of women he had once
adored. Today they were not merely suggestive, they no longer served
as a delicate hint of his distant riotous past. They were become
powerful, thrusting aside the veils, exposing before his eyes the
importunate, corporeal and brutal reality.
At the head of the procession of mistresses whom the fragrance of the
bonbons helped to place in bold relief, one paused, displaying long
white teeth, a satiny rose skin, a snub nose, mouse-colored eyes, and
close-cropped blond hair.
This was Miss Urania, an American, with a vigorous body, sinewy limbs,
muscles of steel and arms of iron.
She had been one of the most celebrated acrobats of the Circus.
Des Esseintes had watched her attentively through many long evenings.
At first, she had seemed to him what she really was, a strong and
beautiful woman, but the desire to know her never troubled him. She
possessed nothing to recommend her in the eyes of a blase man, and yet
he returned to the Circus, allured by he knew not what, importuned by
a sentiment difficult to define.
Gradually, as he watched her, a fantastic idea seized him. Her
graceful antics and arch feminine ways receded to the background of
his mind, replaced by her power and strength which had for him all the
charm of masculinity. Compared with her, Des Esseintes seemed to
himself a frail, effeminate creature, and he began to desire her as
ardently as an anaemic young girl might desire some loutish Hercules
whose arms could crush her in a strong embrace.
One evening he finally decided to communicate with her and dispatched
one of the attendants on this errand. Miss Urania deemed it necessary
not to yield before a preliminary courtship; but she showed herself
amenable, as it was common gossip that Des Esseintes was rich and that
his name was instrumental in establishing women.
But as soon as his wishes were granted, his disappointment surpassed
any he had yet experienced. He had persuaded himself that the American
woman would be as bestial and stupid as a wrestler at a county fair,
and instead her stupidity was of an altogether feminine nature.
Certainly, she lacked education and tact, had neither good sense nor
wit, and displayed an animal voracity at table, but she possessed all
the childish traits of a woman. Her manner and speech were coquettish
and affected, those of a silly, scandal-loving young girl. There was
absolutely nothing masculine about her.
Furthermore, she was withdrawn and puritanical in her embraces,
displaying none of the brute force he had dreaded yet longed for, and
she was subject to none of the perturbations of his sex.
Des Esseintes inevitably returned to the masculine role he had
momentarily abandoned.
His impression of femininity, weakness, need of protection, of fear
even, disappeared. The illusion was no longer possible! Miss Urania
was an ordinary mistress, in no wise justifying the cerebral curiosity
she had at first awakened in him.
Although the charm of her firm skin and magnificent beauty had at
first astonished and captivated Des Esseintes, he lost no time in
terminating this liaison, for his impotence was prematurely hastened
by the frozen and prudish caresses of this woman.
And yet she was the first of all the women he had loved, now flitting
through his revery, to stand out. But if she was more strongly
imprinted on his memory than a host of others whose allurements had
been less spurious and more seductive, the reason must be ascribed to
her healthy animalism, to her exuberance which contrasted so
strikingly with the perfumed anaemia of the others, a faint suggestion
of which he found in the delicate Siraudin bonbon.
Miss Urania haunted him by reason of her very difference, but almost
instantly, offended by the intrusion of this natural, crude aroma, the
antithesis of the scented confection, Des Esseintes returned to more
civilized exhalations and his thoughts reverted to his other
mistresses. They pressed upon him in a throng; but above them all rose
a woman whose startling talents had satisfied him for months.
She was a little, slender brunette, with black eyes and burnished hair
parted on one side and sleeked down over her head. He had known her in
a cafe where she gave ventriloqual performances.
Before the amazed patrons, she caused her tiny cardboard figures,
placed near each other on chairs, to talk; she conversed with the
animated mannikins while flies buzzed around the chandeliers. Then one
heard the rustling of the tense audience, surprised to find itself
seated and instinctively recoiling when they heard the rumbling of
imaginary carriages.
Des Esseintes had been fascinated. He lost no time in winning over the
ventriloquist, tempting her with large sums of money. She delighted
him by the very contrast she exhibited to the American woman. This
brunette used strong perfumes and burned like a crater. Despite all
her blandishments, Des Esseintes wearied of her in a few short hours.
But this did not prevent him from letting himself be fleeced, for the
phenomenon of the ventriloquist attracted him more than did the charms
of the mistress.
Certain plans he had long pondered upon ripened, and he decided to
bring them to fruition.
One evening he ordered a tiny sphinx brought in--a sphinx carved from
black marble and resting in the classic pose with outstretched paws
and erect head. He also purchased a chimera of polychrome clay; it
brandished its mane of hair, and its sides resembled a pair of
bellows. These two images he placed in a corner of the room. Then he
extinguished the lamps, permitting the glowing embers to throw a dim
light around the room and to magnify the objects which were almost
immersed in gloom.
Then he stretched out on a couch beside the woman whose motionless
figure was touched by the ember gleams, and waited.
With strange intonations that he had long and patiently taught her,
she animated the two monsters; she did not even move her lips, she did
not even glance in their direction.
And in the silence followed the marvelous dialogue of the Chimera and
the Sphinx; it was recited in deep guttural tones which were at first
raucous, then turned shrill and unearthly.
"Here, Chimera, pause!"
"Never!"
Lulled by the admirable prose of Flaubert, he listened; he panted and
shivering sensations raced through his frame, when the Chimera uttered
the magical and solemn phrase:
"New perfumes I seek, stranger flowers I seek, pleasures not yet
discovered."
Ah! it was to him that this voice, mysterious as an incantation,
spoke; it was to him that this voice recounted her feverish agitation
for the unknown, her insatiable ideals, her imperative need to escape
from the horrible reality of existence, to leap beyond the confines of
thought, to grope towards the mists of elusive, unattainable art. The
poignant tragedy of his past failures rent his heart. Gently he
clasped the silent woman at his side, he sought refuge in her
nearness, like a child who is inconsolable; he was blind to the
sulkiness of the comedienne obliged to perform off-scene, in her
leisure moments, far from the spotlight.
Their liaison continued, but his spells of exhaustion soon became
acute. His brain no longer sufficed to stimulate his benumbed body. No
longer did his nerves obey his will; and now the crazy whims of
dotards dominated him. Terrified by the approach of a disastrous
weakness in the presence of his mistress, he resorted to fear--that
oldest, most efficacious of excitants.
A hoarse voice from behind the door would exclaim, while he held the
woman in his arms: "Open the door, woman, I know you're in there, and
with whom. Just wait, wait!" Instantly, like a libertine stirred by
fear of discovery in the open, he recovered his strength and hurled
himself madly upon the ventriloquist whose voice continued to bluster
outside the room. In this wise he experienced the pleasures of a
panic-stricken person.
But this state, unfortunately, did not last long, and despite the sums
he paid her, the ventriloquist parted to offer herself to someone less
exigent and less complex.
He had regretted her defection, and now, recalling her, the other
women seemed insipid, their childish graces and monotonous coquetry
disgusting him.
In the ferment of his disordered brain, he delighted in mingling with
these recollections of his past, other more gloomy pleasures, as
theology qualifies the evocation of past, disgraceful acts. With the
physical visions he mingled spiritual ardors brought into play and
motivated by his old readings of the casuists, of the Busembaums and
the Dianas, of the Liguoris and the Sanchezes, treating of
transgressions against the sixth and ninth commandments of the
Decalogue.
In awakening an almost divine ideal in this soul steeped in her
precepts--a soul possibly predisposed to the teachings of the Church
through hereditary influences dating back from the reign of Henry III,
religion had also stirred the illegitimate, forbidden enjoyment of the
senses. Licentious and mystical obsessions haunted his brain, they
mingled confusedly, and he would often be troubled by an unappeasable
desire to shun the vulgarities of the world and to plunge, far from
the customs and modes held in such reverence, into convulsions and
raptures which were holy or infernal and which, in either case, proved
too exhausting and enervating.
He would arise prostrate from such reveries, fatigued and all but
lifeless. He would light the lamps and candles so as to flood the room
with light, for he hoped that by so doing he might possibly diminish
the intolerably persistent and dull throbbing of his arteries which
beat under his neck with redoubled strokes.