He fumbled them over. Then, without a break, with a strange glow of
exhilaration on his pale ethereal face, his eyes flashing, his hands
gesticulating, his body swaying, marching up and down the room, he
recited with a crescendo which mounted to a magnificent fortissimo in
the coda:
Perfumery catalogues: Coty, Houbigant, Atkinson, Rigaud, Rue de la
Paix, Bond Street, Place Vendôme, Regent Street, Nirvana, Chypre,
Sakountala, Ambre, Après l'Ondée, Quelques Fleurs, Fougère Royale,
Myrbaha, Yavahnah, Gaudika, Délices de Péra, Cœur de Jeannette, Djer
Kiss, Jockey-Club, and the Egyptian perfumes, Myrrh and Kyphy. Did
you know that Richelieu lived in an atmosphere heavily laden with the
most pungent perfumes to inflame his sexual imagination? Automobile
catalogues: Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, Ford, tires, self-starters,
limousines, carburettors, gas. Jewellery catalogues: heaps of 'em,
all about diamonds and platinum, chrysoprase and jade, malachite and
chalcedony, amethysts and garnets, and the emerald, the precious stone
which comes the nearest to approximating that human manifestation known
as art, because it always has flaws; red jasper, sacred to the rosy
god, Bacchus, the green plasma, blood-stone, cornelian, cat's-eye,
amber, with its medicinal properties, the Indian jewels, spinels, the
reddish orange jacinth, and the violet almandine. Did you know that
the Emperor Claudius used to clothe himself in smaragds and sardonyx
stones and that Pope Paul II died of a cold caught from the weight
and chill of the rings which loaded his aged fingers? Are you aware
that the star-topaz is as rare as a Keutschacher Rubentaler of the
year 1504? Yonder is a volume which treats of the glyptic lore. In it
you may read of the Assyrian cylinders fashioned from red and green
serpentine, the Egyptian scarabei, carved in steaschist; you may learn
of the seal-cutters of Nineveh and of the Signet of Sennacherib, now
preserved in the British Museum. Do you know that a jewel engraved with
Hercules at the fountain was deposited in the tomb of the Frankish
King Childeric at Tournay? Do you know of Mnesarchus, the Tyrrhene
gem-cutter, who practised his art at Samos? Have you seen the Julia of
Evodus, engraved in a giant aquamarine, or the Byzantine topaz, carved
with the figure of the blind bow-boy, sacrificing the Psyche-butterfly,
or the emerald signet of Polycrates, with the lyre cut upon it, or the
Etruscan peridot representing a sphinx scratching her ear with her hind
paw, or the sapphire, discovered in a disused well at Hereford, in
which the head of the Madonna has been chiseled, with the inscription,
round the beasil, in Lombard letters, TECTA LEGE LECTA TEGE, or the
jacinth engraved with the triple face of Baphomet, with a legend of
darkly obscene purport? The breastplate of the Jewish High Priest had
its oracular gems, which were the Urim and Thummim. Apollonius Tyaneus,
the sorcerer, for the purposes of his enchantments, wore special
rings with appropriate stones for each day of the week. Also, in this
curious book, and others which you may examine, such as George III's
Dactyliotheca Smithiana (Venice; 1767), you will find some account
of the gems of the Gnostics: an intaglio in a pale convex plasma,
carved with the Chnuphis Serpent, raising himself aloft, with the
seven vowels, the elements of his name, above; another jewel engraved
with the figure of the jackal-headed Anubis, the serpent with the
lion's head, the infant Horus, seated on the lotus, the cynocephalus
baboon, and the Abraxas-god, Iao, created from the four elements; an
Egyptian seal of the god, Harpocrates, seated on the mystic lotus,
in adoration of the Yoni; and an esoteric green jasper amulet in the
form of a dragon, surrounded by rays. Florists' catalogues: strangely
wicked cyclamens, meat-eating begonias, beloved of des Esseintes (Henri
Matisse grows these peccant plants in his garden and they suggest his
work), shaggy chrysanthemums, orchids, green, white, and mauve, the
veined salpiglossis, the mournful, rich-smelling tube-rose, all the
mystic blossoms adored by Robert de la Condamine's primitive, tortured,
orgiastic saints in The Double Garden, marigolds and daisies, the most
complex and the most simple flowers of all, hypocritical fuchsias,
and calceolaria, sacred to la bella Cenerentola. Reaper catalogues:
you know, the McCormicks and the Middle West. Porcelain catalogues:
Rookwood, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, Delft, the quaint, clean, heavy,
charming Brittany ware, Majolica, the wondrous Chinese porcelains,
self-colour, sang de bœuf, apple of roses, peach-blow, Sèvres, signed
with the fox of Emile Renard, or the eye of Pajou, or the little house
of Jean-Jacques Anteaume. Furniture catalogues: Adam and Louis XV,
Futurist, Empire, Venetian and Chinese, Poincaré and Grand Rapids.
Art-dealers' catalogues: Félicien Rops and Jo Davidson, Renoir and
Franz Hals, Cranach and Picasso, Manet and Carpaccio. Book-dealers'
catalogues: George Borrow, Thomas Love Peacock, Ambrose Bierce, William
Beckford, Robert Smith Surtees, Francis William Bain. Do you know
the true story of Ambrose Gwinett, related by Oliver Goldsmith: the
fellow who, having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller
with whom he had shared his bed-chamber at a tavern, revived in the
night, shipped at sea as a sailor, and later met on a vessel the man
for whose murder he had been hung? Gwinett's supposed victim had been
attacked during the night with a severe bleeding of the nose, had
risen and left the house for a walk by the sea-wall, and had been
shanghaied. Catalogues of curious varieties of cats: Australian, with
long noses and long hind-legs, like kangaroos, Manx cats without any
tails and chocolate and fawn Siamese cats with sapphire eyes, the
cacodorous Russian blue cats, and male tortoise-shells. Catalogues of
tinshops: tin plates, tin cups, and can-openers. Catalogues of laces:
Valenciennes and Cluny and Chantilly and double-knot, Punto in Aria, a
Spanish lace of the sixteenth century, lace constructed of human hair
or aloe fibre, Point d'Espagne, made by Jewesses. Catalogues of toys:
an engine that spreads smoke in the air, as it runs around a track
with a circumference of eight feet, a doll that cries, Uncle! Uncle! a
child's opium set. Catalogues of operas: Marta and Don Pasquale, Der
Freischütz and Mefistofele, Simon Bocanegra and La Dolores. Cook-Books:
Mrs. Pennell's The Feasts of Autolycus, a grandiose treatise on the
noblest of the arts, wherein you may read of the amorous adventures
of The Triumphant Tomato and the Incomparable Onion, Mr. Finck's Food
and Flavour, the gentle Abraham Hayward on The Art of Dining, the
biography of Vatel, the super-cook who killed himself because the fish
for the king's dinner were missing, Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which Dr.
Johnson boasted that he could surpass, and, above all, Jean Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du Goût. Catalogues of harness, bits and
saddles. Catalogues of cigarettes: Dimitrinos and Melachrinos, Fatimas
and Sweet Caporals. Catalogues of liqueurs: Danziger Goldwasser and
Crème Yvette, Parfait Amour, as tanagrine as the blood in the sacred
altar chalice. Catalogues of paints: yellow ochre and gamboge, burnt
sienna and Chinese vermilion. Catalogues of hats: derbies and fedoras,
straw and felt hats, top-hats and caps, sombreros, tam-o'shanters,
billycocks, shakos and tarbooshes....
He stopped, breathless with excitement, demanding, What do you think of
that?