The servants were seized with alarm and lost no time in calling the
Fontenay physician who was completely at sea about Des Esseintes'
condition. He mumbled a few medical terms, felt his pulse, examined
the invalid's tongue, unsuccessfully sought to make him speak,
prescribed sedatives and rest, promised to return on the morrow and,
at the negative sign made by Des Esseintes who recovered enough
strength to chide the zeal of his servants and to bid farewell to this
intruder, he departed and was soon retailing through the village the
eccentricities of this house whose decorations had positively amazed
him and held him rooted to the spot.
To the great astonishment of the domestics, who no longer dared stir
from the servants' quarters, their master recovered in a few days, and
they surprised him drumming against the window panes, gazing at the
sky with a troubled look.
One afternoon the bells were peremptorily rung and Des Esseintes
commanded his trunks to be packed for a long voyage.
While the man and the woman were choosing, under his guidance, the
necessary equipment, he feverishly paced up and down the cabin of the
dining room, consulted the timetables of the steamers, walked through
his study where he continued to gaze at the clouds with an air at once
impatient and satisfied.
For a whole week, the weather had been atrocious. Streams of soot
raced unceasing across the grey fields of the sky-masses of clouds
like rocks torn from the earth.
At intervals, showers swept downward, engulfing the valley with
torrents of rain.
Today, the appearance of the heavens had changed. The rivers of ink
had evaporated and vanished, and the harsh contours of the clouds had
softened. The sky was uniformly flat and covered with a brackish film.
Little by little, this film seemed to drop, and a watery haze covered
the country side. The rain no longer fell in cataracts as on the
preceding evening; instead, it fell incessantly, fine, sharp and
penetrating; it inundated the walks, covered the roads with its
innumerable threads which joined heaven and earth. The livid sky threw
a wan leaden light on the village which was now transformed into a
lake of mud pricked by needles of water that dotted the puddles with
drops of bright silver. In this desolation of nature, everything was
gray, and only the housetops gleamed against the dead tones of the
walls.
"What weather!" sighed the aged domestic, placing on a chair the
clothes which his master had requested of him--an outfit formerly
ordered from London.
Des Esseintes' sole response was to rub his hands and to sit down in
front of a book-case with glass doors. He examined the socks which had
been placed nearby for his inspection. For a moment he hesitated on
the color; then he quickly studied the melancholy day and earnestly
bethought himself of the effect he desired. He chose a pair the color
of feuillemort, quickly slipped them on, put on a pair of buttoned
shoes, donned the mouse grey suit which was checquered with a lava
gray and dotted with black, placed a small hunting cap on his head and
threw a blue raincoat over him. He reached the railway station,
followed by the servant who almost bent under the weight of a trunk, a
valise, a carpet bag, a hat box and a traveling rug containing
umbrellas and canes. He informed his servant that the date of his
return was problematical, that he might return in a year, in a month,
in a week, or even sooner, and enjoined him to change nothing in the
house. He gave a sum of money which he thought would be necessary for
the upkeep of the house during his absence, and climbed into the
coach, leaving the old man astounded, arms waving and mouth gaping,
behind the rail, while the train got under way.
He was alone in his compartment; a vague and dirty country side, such
as one sees through an aquarium of troubled water, receded rapidly
behind the train which was lashed by the rain. Plunged in his
meditations, Des Esseintes closed his eyes.
Once more, this so ardently desired and finally attained solitude had
ended in a fearful distress. This silence which formerly would have
appeared as a compensation for the stupidities heard for years, now
weighed on him with an unendurable burden. One morning he had
awakened, as uneasy as a prisoner in his cell; his lips had sought to
articulate sounds, tears had welled to his eyes and he had found it
impossible to breathe, suffocating like a person who had sobbed for
hours.
Seized with a desire to walk, to behold a human figure, to speak to
someone, to mingle with life, he had proceeded to call his domestics,
employing a specious pretext; but conversation with them was
impossible. Besides the fact that these old people, bowed down by
years of silence and the customs of attendants, were almost dumb, the
distance at which Des Esseintes had always kept them was hardly
conducive to inducing them to open their mouths now. Too, they
possessed dull brains and were incapable of answering his questions
other than by monosyllables.
It was impossible, therefore, to find any solace in their society; but
a new phenomenon now occurred. The reading of the novels of Dickens,
which he had lately undertaken to soothe his nerves and which had only
produced effects the opposite of those hoped for, began slowly to act
in an unexpected manner, bringing on visions of English existence on
which he mused for hours; little by little, in these fictive
contemplations, ideas insinuated themselves, ideas of the voyage
brought to an end, of verified dreams on which was imposed the desire
to experience new impressions, and thus escape the exhausting cerebral
debauches intent upon beating in the void.
With its mist and rain, this abominable weather aided his thoughts
still more, by reinforcing the memories of his readings, by placing
under his eyes the unfading image of a land of fog and mud, and by
refusing to let his ideas wander idly.
One day, able to endure it no longer, he had instantly decided. Such
was his haste that he even took flight before the designated time, for
he wished to shun the present moment, wished to find himself jostled
and shouldered in the hubbub of crowded streets and railway stations.
"I breathe!" he exclaimed when the train moderated its waltz and
stopped in the Sceaux station rotunda, panting while its wheels
performed its last pirouettes.
Once in the boulevard d'Enfer, he hailed a coachman. In some strange
manner he extracted a pleasure from the fact that he was so hampered
with trunks and rugs. By promising a substantial tip, he reached an
understanding with the man of the brown trousers and red waistcoat.
"At once!" he commanded. "And when you reach the rue de Rivoli, stop
in front of _Galignani's Messenger_." Before departing, he desired to
buy a Baedeker or Murray guide of London.
The carriage got under way heavily, raising rings of mud around its
wheels and moving through marsh-like ground. Beneath the gray sky
which seemed suspended over the house tops, water gushed down the
thick sides of the high walls, spouts overflowed, and the streets were
coated with a slimy dirt in which passersby slipped. Thickset men
paused on sidewalks bespattered by passing omnibuses, and women, their
skirts tucked up to the knees, bent under umbrellas, flattened
themselves against the shops to avoid being splashed.
The rain entered diagonally through the carriage doors. Des Esseintes
was obliged to lift the carriage windows down which the water ran,
while drops of mud furrowed their way like fireworks on each side of
the _fiacre_. To the monotonous sound of sacks of peas shaking against
his head through the action of the showers pattering against the
trunks and on the carriage rug, Des Esseintes dreamed of his voyage.
This already was a partial realization of his England, enjoyed in
Paris through the means of this frightful weather: a rainy, colossal
London smelling of molten metal and of soot, ceaselessly steaming and
smoking in the fog now spread out before his eyes; then rows of docks
sprawled ahead, as far as the eye could reach, docks full of cranes,
hand winches and bales, swarming with men perched on masts or astride
yard sails, while myriads of other men on the quays pushed hogsheads
into cellars.
All this was transpiring in vast warehouses along the river banks
which were bathed by the muddy and dull water of an imaginary Thames,
in a forest of masts and girders piercing the wan clouds of the
firmament, while trains rushed past at full speed or rumpled
underground uttering horrible cries and vomiting waves of smoke, and
while, through every street, monstrous and gaudy and infamous
advertisements flared through the eternal twilight, and strings of
carriages passed between rows of preoccupied and taciturn people whose
eyes stared ahead and whose elbows pressed closely against their
bodies.
Des Esseintes shivered deliciously to feel himself mingling in this
terrible world of merchants, in this insulating mist, in this
incessant activity, in this pitiless gearing which ground millions of
the disinherited, urged by the comfort-distilling philanthropists to
recite Biblical verses and to sing psalms.
Then the vision faded suddenly with a jolt of the _fiacre_ which made
him rebound in his seat. He gazed through the carriage windows. Night
had fallen; gas burners blinked through the fog, amid a yellowish
halo; ribbons of fire swam in puddles of water and seemed to revolve
around wheels of carriages moving through liquid and dirty flame. He
endeavored to get his bearings, perceived the Carrousel and suddenly,
unreasoningly, perhaps through the simple effect of the high fall from
fanciful spaces, his thought reverted to a very trivial incident. He
remembered that his domestic had neglected to put a tooth brush in his
belongings. Then, he passed in review the list of objects packed up;
everything had been placed in his valise, but the annoyance of having
omitted this brush persisted until the driver, pulling up, broke the
chain of his reminiscences and regrets.
He was in the rue de Rivoli, in front of _Galignani's Messenger_.
Separated by a door whose unpolished glass was covered with
inscriptions and with strips of passe-partout framing newspaper
clippings and telegrams, were two vast shop windows crammed with
albums and books. He drew near, attracted by the sight of these books
bound in parrot-blue and cabbage-green paper, embossed with silver and
golden letterings. All this had an anti-Parisian touch, a mercantile
appearance, more brutal and yet less wretched than those worthless
bindings of French books; here and there, in the midst of the opened
albums, reproducing humorous scenes from Du Maurier and John Leech, or
the delirious cavalcades of Caldecott, some French novels appeared,
blending placid and satisfied vulgarities to these rich verjuice hues.
He tore himself away from his contemplation, opened the door and
entered a large library which was full of people. Seated strangers
unfolded maps and jabbered in strange languages. A clerk brought him a
complete collection of guides. He, in turns, sat down to examine the
books with their flexible covers. He glanced through them and paused
at a page of the Baedeker describing the London museums. He became
interested in the laconic and exact details of the guide books, but
his attention wandered away from the old English paintings to the
moderns which attracted him much more. He recalled certain works he
had seen at international expositions, and imagined that he might
possibly behold them once more at London: pictures by Millais--the
_Eve of Saint Agnes_ with its lunar clear green; pictures by Watts,
strange in color, checquered with gamboge and indigo, pictures
sketched by a sick Gustave Moreau, painted by an anaemic Michael
Angelo and retouched by a Raphael submerged in blue. Among other
canvasses, he recalled a _Denunciation of Cain_, an _Ida_, some _Eves_
where, in the strange and mysterious mixture of these three masters,
rose the personality, at once refined and crude, of a learned and
dreamy Englishman tormented by the bewitchment of cruel tones.
These canvasses thronged through his memory. The clerk, astonished by
this client who was so lost to the world, asked him which of the
guides he would take. Des Esseintes remained dumbfounded, then excused
himself, bought a Baedeker and departed. The dampness froze him to the
spot; the wind blew from the side, lashing the arcades with whips of
rain. "Proceed to that place," he said to the driver, pointing with
his finger to the end of a passage where a store formed the angle of
the rue de Rivoli and the rue Castiglione and, with its whitish panes
of glass illumed from within, resembled a vast night lamp burning
through the wretchedness of this mist, in the misery of this crazy
weather.
It was the _Bodega_. Des Esseintes strayed into a large room sustained
by iron pillars and lined, on each side of its walls, with tall
barrels placed on their ends upon gantries, hooped with iron, their
paunches with wooden loopholes imitating a rack of pipes and from
whose notches hung tulip-shaped glasses, upside down. The lower sides
were bored and hafted with stone cocks. These hogsheads painted with a
royal coat of arms displayed the names of their drinks, the contents,
and the prices on colored labels and stated that they were to be
purchased by the cask, by the bottle or by the glass.
In the passage between these rows of casks, under the gas jets which
flared at one end of an ugly iron-gray chandelier, tables covered with
baskets of Palmers biscuits, hard and salty cakes, plates piled with
mince pies and sandwiches concealing strong, mustardy concoctions
under their unsavory covers, succeeded each other between a row of
seats and as far as the end of this cellar which was lined with still
more hogsheads carrying tiny barrels on their tops, resting on their
sides and bearing their names stamped with hot metal into the oak.
An odor of alcohol assailed Des Esseintes upon taking a seat in this
room heavy with strong wines. He looked about him. Here, the tuns were
placed in a straight line, exhibiting the whole series of ports, the
sweet or sour wines the color of mahogany or amaranth, and
distinguished by such laudatory epithets as _old port_, _light
delicate_, _Cockburn's very fine_, _magnificent old Regina_. There,
protruding formidable abdomens pressed closely against each other,
huge casks contained the martial Spanish wines, sherry and its
derivatives, the _san lucar_, _pasto_, _pale dry_, _oloroso_ and
_amontilla_.
The cellar was filled with people. Leaning on his elbows on a corner
of the table, Des Esseintes sat waiting for his glass of port ordered
of a gentleman who was opening explosive sodas contained in oval
bottles which recalled, while exaggerating, the capsules of gelatine
and gluten used by pharmacies to conceal the taste of certain
medicines.
Englishmen were everywhere,--awkward pale clergymen garbed in black
from head to foot, with soft hats, laced shoes, very long coats dotted
in the front with tiny buttons, clean-shaved chins, round spectacles,
greasy flat hair; faces of tripe dealers and mastiff snouts with
apoplectic necks, ears like tomatoes, vinous cheeks, blood-shot crazy
eyes, whiskers that looked like those of some big monkeys; farther
away, at the end of the wine store, a long row of tow-headed
individuals, their chins covered with white hair like the end of an
artichoke, reading, through a microscope, the tiny roman type of an
English newspaper; opposite him, a sort of American commodore, dumpy
and thick-set, with smoked skin and bulbous nose, was sleeping, a
cigar planted in the hairy aperture of his mouth. Opposite were frames
hanging on the wall enclosing advertisements of Champagne, the trade
marks of Perrier and Roederer, Heidsieck and Mumm, and a hooded head
of a monk, with the name of Dom Perignon, Rheims, written in Gothic
characters.
A certain enervation enveloped Des Esseintes in this guard house
atmosphere; stunned by the prattle of the Englishmen conversing among
themselves, he fell into a revery, evoking, before the purple port
which filled the glasses, the creatures of Dickens that love this
drink so very much, imaginatively peopling the cellar with new
personages, seeing here, the white head of hair and the ruddy
complexion of Mr. Wickfield; there, the phlegmatic, crafty face and
the vengeful eye of Mr. Tulkinghorn, the melancholy solicitor in
_Bleak House_. Positively, all of them broke away from his memory and
installed themselves in the _Bodega_, with their peculiar
characteristics and their betraying gestures. His memories, brought to
life by his recent readings, attained a startling precision. The city
of the romancer, the house illumined and warmed, so perfectly tended
and isolated, the bottles poured slowly by little Dorrit and Dora
Copperfield and Tom Pinch's sister, appeared to him sailing like an
ark in a deluge of mire and soot. Idly he wandered through this
imaginary London, happy to be sheltered, as he listened to the
sinister shrieks of tugs plying up and down the Thames. His glass was
empty. Despite the heavy fumes in this cellar, caused by the cigars
and pipes, he experienced a cold shiver when he returned to the
reality of the damp and fetid weather.
He called for a glass of amontillado, and suddenly, beside this pale,
dry wine, the lenitive, sweetish stories of the English author were
routed, to be replaced by the pitiless revulsives and the grievous
irritants of Edgar Allen Poe; the cold nightmares of _The Cask of
Amontillado_, of the man immured in a vault, assailed him; the
ordinary placid faces of American and English drinkers who occupied
the room, appeared to him to reflect involuntary frightful thoughts,
to be harboring instinctive, odious plots. Then he perceived that he
was left alone here and that the dinner hour was near. He payed his
bill, tore himself from his seat and dizzily gained the door. He
received a wet slap in the face upon leaving the place. The street
lamps moved their tiny fans of flame which failed to illuminate; the
sky had dropped to the very houses. Des Esseintes viewed the arcades
of the rue de Rivoli, drowned in the gloom and submerged by water, and
it seemed to him that he was in the gloomy tunnel under the Thames.
Twitchings of his stomach recalled him to reality. He regained his
carriage, gave the driver the address of the tavern in the rue
d'Amsterdam near the station, and looked at his watch: seven o'clock.
He had just time to eat dinner; the train would not leave until ten
minutes of nine, and he counted on his fingers, reckoning the hours of
travel from Dieppe to Newhaven, saying to himself: "If the figures of
the timetable are correct, I shall be at London tomorrow at
twelve-thirty."
The _fiacre_ stopped in front of the tavern. Once more, Des Esseintes
alighted and entered a long dark plain room, divided into partitions
as high as a man's waist,--a series of compartments resembling stalls.
In this room, wider towards the door, many beer pumps stood on a
counter, near hams having the color of old violins, red lobsters,
marinated mackerel, with onions and carrots, slices of lemon, bunches
of laurel and thym, juniper berries and long peppers swimming in thick
sauce.
One of these boxes was unoccupied. He took it and called a young
black-suited man who bent forward, muttering something in a jargon he
could not understand. While the cloth was being laid, Des Esseintes
viewed his neighbors. They were islanders, just as at the _Bodega_,
with cold faience eyes, crimson complexions, thoughtful or haughty
airs. They were reading foreign newspapers. The only ones eating were
unescorted women in pairs, robust English women with boyish faces,
large teeth, ruddy apple cheeks, long hands and legs. They attacked,
with genuine ardor, a rumpsteak pie, a warm meat dish cooked in
mushroom sauce and covered with a crust, like a pie.
After having lacked appetite for such a long time, he remained amazed
in the presence of these hearty eaters whose voracity whetted his
hunger. He ordered oxtail soup and enjoyed it heartily. Then he
glanced at the menu for the fish, ordered a haddock and, seized with a
sudden pang of hunger at the sight of so many people relishing their
food, he ate some roast beef and drank two pints of ale, stimulated by
the flavor of a cow-shed which this fine, pale beer exhaled.
His hunger persisted. He lingered over a piece of blue Stilton cheese,
made quick work of a rhubarb tart, and to vary his drinking, quenched
his thirst with porter, that dark beer which smells of Spanish
licorice but which does not have its sugary taste.
He breathed deeply. Not for years had he eaten and drunk so much. This
change of habit, this choice of unexpected and solid food had awakened
his stomach from its long sleep. He leaned back in his chair, lit a
cigarette and prepared to sip his coffee into which gin had been
poured.
The rain continued to fall. He heard it patter on the panes which
formed a ceiling at the end of the room; it fell in cascades down the
spouts. No one was stirring in the room. Everybody, utterly weary, was
indulging himself in front of his wine glass.
Tongues were now wagging freely. As almost all the English men and
women raised their eyes as they spoke, Des Esseintes concluded that
they were talking of the bad weather; not one of them laughed. He
threw a delighted glance on their suits whose color and cut did not
perceivably differ from that of others, and he experienced a sense of
contentment in not being out of tune in this environment, of being, in
some way, though superficially, a naturalized London citizen. Then he
suddenly started. "And what about the train?" he asked himself. He
glanced at his watch: ten minutes to eight. "I still have nearly a
half-hour to remain here." Once more, he began to muse upon the plan
he had conceived.
In his sedentary life, only two countries had ever attracted him:
Holland and England.
He had satisfied the first of his desires. Unable to keep away, one
fine day he had left Paris and visited the towns of the Low Lands, one
by one.
In short, nothing but cruel disillusions had resulted from this trip.
He had fancied a Holland after the works of Teniers and Steen, of
Rembrandt and Ostade, in his usual way imagining rich, unique and
incomparable Ghettos, had thought of amazing kermesses, continual
debauches in the country sides, intent for a view of that patriarchal
simplicity, that jovial lusty spirit celebrated by the old masters.
Certainly, Haarlem and Amsterdam had enraptured him. The unwashed
people, seen in their country farms, really resembled those types
painted by Van Ostade, with their uncouth children and their old fat
women, embossed with huge breasts and enormous bellies. But of the
unrestrained joys, the drunken family carousals, not a whit. He had to
admit that the Dutch paintings at the Louvre had misled him. They had
simply served as a springing board for his dreams. He had rushed
forward on a false track and had wandered into capricious visions,
unable to discover in the land itself, anything of that real and
magical country which he had hoped to behold, seeing nothing at all,
on the plots of ground strewn with barrels, of the dances of
petticoated and stockinged peasants crying for very joy, stamping
their feet out of sheer happiness and laughing loudly.
Decidedly nothing of all this was visible. Holland was a country just
like any other country, and what was more, a country in no wise
primitive, not at all simple, for the Protestant religion with its
formal hypocricies and solemn rigidness held sway here.
The memory of that disenchantment returned to him. Once more he
glanced at his watch: ten minutes still separated him from the train's
departure. "It is about time to ask for the bill and leave," he told
himself.
He felt an extreme heaviness in his stomach and through his body.
"Come!" he addressed himself, "let us drink and screw up our courage."
He filled a glass of brandy, while asking for the reckoning. An
individual in black suit and with a napkin under one arm, a sort of
majordomo with a bald and sharp head, a greying beard without
moustaches, came forward. A pencil rested behind his ear and he
assumed an attitude like a singer, one foot in front of the other; he
drew a note book from his pocket, and without glancing at his paper,
his eyes fixed on the ceiling, near a chandelier, wrote while
counting. "There you are!" he said, tearing the sheet from his note
book and giving it to Des Esseintes who looked at him with curiosity,
as though he were a rare animal. What a surprising John Bull, he
thought, contemplating this phlegmatic person who had, because of his
shaved mouth, the appearance of a wheelsman of an American ship.
At this moment, the tavern door opened. Several persons entered
bringing with them an odor of wet dog to which was blent the smell of
coal wafted by the wind through the opened door. Des Esseintes was
incapable of moving a limb. A soft warm languor prevented him from
even stretching out his hand to light a cigar. He told himself: "Come
now, let us get up, we must take ourselves off." Immediate objections
thwarted his orders. What is the use of moving, when one can travel on
a chair so magnificently? Was he not even now in London, whose aromas
and atmosphere and inhabitants, whose food and utensils surrounded
him? For what could he hope, if not new disillusionments, as had
happened to him in Holland?
He had but sufficient time to race to the station. An overwhelming
aversion for the trip, an imperious need of remaining tranquil, seized
him with a more and more obvious and stubborn strength. Pensively, he
let the minutes pass, thus cutting off all retreat, and he said to
himself, "Now it would be necessary to rush to the gate and crowd into
the baggage room! What ennui! What a bore that would be!" Then he
repeated to himself once more, "In fine, I have experienced and seen
all I wished to experience and see. I have been filled with English
life since my departure. I would be mad indeed to go and, by an
awkward trip, lose those imperishable sensations. How stupid of me to
have sought to disown my old ideas, to have doubted the efficacy of
the docile phantasmagories of my brain, like a very fool to have
thought of the necessity, of the curiosity, of the interest of an
excursion!"
"Well!" he exclaimed, consulting his watch, "it is now time to return
home."
This time, he arose and left, ordered the driver to bring him back to
the Sceaux station, and returned with his trunks, packages, valises,
rugs, umbrellas and canes, to Fontenay, feeling the physical
stimulation and the moral fatigue of a man coming back to his home
after a long and dangerous voyage.