He set about it in the following way: to imitate the yellow distemper beloved by church and state alike, he had the walls hung with saffron silk; and to represent the chocolate-brown dado normally found in this sort of room, he covered the lower part of the walls with strips of kingwood, a dark-brown wood with a purple sheen. The effect was delightful, recalling – though not too clearly – the unattractive crudity of the model he was copying and adapting. The ceiling was similarly covered with white holland, which had the appearance of plaster without its bright, shiny look; as for the cold tiles of the floor, he managed to hit them off quite well, thanks to a carpet patterned in red squares, with the wood dyed white in places where sandals and boots could be supposed to have left their mark.
He furnished this room with a little iron bedstead, a mock hermit’s bed, made of old wrought iron, but highly polished and set off at head and foot with an intricate design of tulips and vine-branches intertwined, a design taken from the balustrade of the great staircase of an old mansion.
By way of a bedside table, he installed an antique priedieu, the inside of which could hold a chamber-pot while the top supported a euchologion; against the opposite wall he set a churchwardens’ pew, with a great openwork canopy and misericords carved in the solid wood; and to provide illumination, he had some altar candlesticks fitted with real wax tapers which he bought from a firm specializing in ecclesiastical requirements, for he professed a genuine antipathy to all modern forms of lighting, whether paraffin, shale-oil, stearin candles or gas, finding them all too crude and garish for his liking.
Before falling asleep in the morning, as he lay in bed with his head on the pillow, he would gaze at his Theotocopuli, whose harsh colouring did something to dampen the gaiety of the yellow silk hangings and put them in a graver mood; and at these times he found it easy to imagine that he was living hundreds of miles from Paris, far removed from the world of men, in the depths of some secluded monastery.
After all, it was easy enough to sustain this particular illusion, in that the life he was leading was very similar to the life of a monk. He thus enjoyed all the benefits of cloistered confinement while avoiding the disadvantages – the army-style discipline, the lack of comfort, the dirt, the promiscuity, the monotonous idleness. Just as he had made his cell into a warm, luxurious bedroom, so he had ensured that his everyday existence should be pleasant and comfortable, sufficiently occupied and in no way restricted.
Like an eremite, he was ripe for solitude, exhausted by life and expecting nothing more of it; like a monk again, he was overwhelmed by an immense weariness, by a longing for peace and quiet, by a desire to have no further contact with the heathen, who in his eyes comprised all utilitarians and fools.
In short, although he had no vocation for the state of grace, he was conscious of a genuine fellow-feeling for those who were shut up in religious houses, persecuted by a vindictive society that cannot forgive either the proper contempt they feel for it or their averred intention of redeeming and expiating by years of silence the ever-increasing licentiousness of its silly, senseless conversations.
CHAPTER 6
Buried deep in a vast wing-chair, his feet resting on the pear-shaped, silver-gilt supports of the andirons, his slippers toasting in front of the crackling logs that shot out bright tongues of flame as if they felt the furious blast of a bellows, Des Esseintes put the old quarto he had been reading down on a table, stretched himself, lit a cigarette and gave himself up to a delicious reverie. His mind was soon going full tilt in a pursuit of certain recollections which had lain low for months, but which had suddenly been started by a name recurring, for no apparent reason, to his memory.
Once again he could see, with surprising clearness, his friend D’Aigurande’s embarrassment when he had been forced to confess to a gathering of confirmed bachelors that he had just completed the final arrangements for his wedding. There was a general outcry, and his friends tried to dissuade him with a frightening description of the horrors of sharing a bed. But it was all in vain: he had taken leave of his senses, believed that his future wife was a woman of intelligence and maintained that he had discovered in her quite exceptional qualities of tenderness and devotion.
Des Esseintes had been the only one among all these young men to encourage him in his resolve, and this he did as soon as he learnt that his friend’s fiancée wanted to live on the corner of a newly constructed boulevard, in one of those modern flats built on a circular plan.
Persuaded of the merciless power of petty vexations, which can have a more baneful effect on sanguine souls than the great tragedies of life, and taking account of the fact that D’Aigurande had no private means, while his wife’s dowry was practically non-existent, he saw in this innocent whim an endless source of ridiculous misfortunes.
As he had foreseen, D’Aigurande proceeded to buy rounded pieces of furniture – console-tables sawn away at the back to form a semi-circle, curtain-poles curved like bows, carpets cut on a crescent pattern – until he had furnished the whole flat with things made to order. He spent twice as much as anybody else; and then, when his wife, finding herself short of money for new dresses, got tired of living in this rotunda, and took herself off to a flat with ordinary square rooms at a lower rent, not a single piece of furniture would fit in or stand up properly. Soon the bothersome things were giving rise to endless annoyances; the bond between husband and wife, already worn thin by the inevitable irritations of a shared life, grew more tenuous week by week; and there were angry scenes and mutual recriminations as they came to realize the impossibility of living in a sitting-room where sofas and console-tables would not go against the walls and wobbled at the slightest touch, however many blocks and wedges were used to steady them. There was not enough money to pay for alterations, and even if there had been, these would have been almost impossible to carry out. Everything became a ground for high words and squabbles, from the drawers that had stuck in the rickety furniture to the petty thefts of the maid-servant, who took advantage of the constant quarrels between her master and mistress to raid the cash-box. In short, their life became unbearable; he went out in search of amusement, while she looked to adultery to provide compensation for the drizzly dreariness of her life. Finally, by mutual consent, they cancelled their lease and petitioned for a legal separation.
‘My plan of campaign was right in every particular,’ Des Esseintes had told himself on hearing the news, with the satisfaction of a strategist whose manoeuvres, worked out long beforehand, have resulted in victory.
Now, sitting by his fireside and thinking about the break-up of this couple whose union he had encouraged with his good advice, he threw a fresh armful of wood into the hearth and promptly started dreaming again.
More memories, belonging to the same order of ideas, now came crowding in on him.
Some years ago, he remembered he had been walking along the Rue de Rivoli one evening, when he had come across a young scamp of sixteen or so, a peaky-faced, sharp-eyed child, as attractive in his way as any girl. He was sucking hard at a cigarette, the paper of which had burst where bits of the coarse tobacco were poking through. Cursing away, the boy was striking kitchen matches on his thigh; not one of them would light and soon he had used them all up. Catching sight of Des Esseintes, who was standing watching him, he came up, touched his cap and politely asked for a light. Des Esseintes offered him some of his own scented Dubèques, got into conversation with the boy and persuaded him to tell the story of his life.
Nothing could have been more banal: his name was Auguste Langlois, he worked for a cardboard-manufacturer, he had lost his mother and his father beat him black and blue.
Des Esseintes listened thoughtfully.
‘Come and have a drink,’ he said, and took him to a café where he regaled him with a few glasses of heady punch. These the boy drank without a word.
‘Look here,’ said Des Esseintes suddenly; ‘how would you like a bit of fun tonight? I’ll foot the bill, of course.’ And he had t
aken the youngster off to an establishment on the third floor of a house in the Rue Mosnier, where a certain Madame Laure kept an assortment of pretty girls in a series of crimson cubicles furnished with circular mirrors, couches and wash-basins.
There a wonderstruck Auguste, twisting his cap in his hands, had stood gaping at a battalion of women whose painted mouths opened all together to exclaim:
‘What a duck! Isn’t he sweet!’
‘But dearie, you’re not old enough,’ said a big brunette, a girl with prominent eyes and a hook nose who occupied at Madame Laure’s the indispensable position of the handsome Jewess.
Meanwhile Des Esseintes, who was obviously quite at home in this place, had made himself comfortable and was quietly chatting with the mistress of the house. But he broke off for a moment to speak to the boy.
‘Don’t be so scared, stupid,’ he said. ‘Go on, take your pick – remember this is on me.’
He gave a gentle push to the lad, who flopped on to a divan between two of the women. At a sign from Madame Laure, they drew a little closer together, covering Auguste’s knees with their peignoirs and cuddling up to him so that he breathed in the warm, heady scent of their powdered shoulders. He was sitting quite still now, flushed and dry-mouthed, his downcast eyes darting from under their lashes inquisitive glances that were all directed at the upper part of the girls’ thighs.
Vanda, the handsome Jewess, suddenly gave him a kiss and a little good advice, telling him to do whatever his parents told him, while all the time her hands were wandering over the boy’s body; his expression changed and he lay back in a kind of swoon, with his head on her breast.
‘So it’s not on your own account that you’ve come here tonight,’ said Madame Laure to Des Esseintes. ‘But where the devil did you get hold of that baby?’ she added, as Auguste disappeared with the handsome Jewess.
‘Why, in the street, my dear.’
‘But you’re not tight,’ muttered the old lady. Then, after a moment’s thought, she gave an understanding, motherly smile.
‘Ah, now I see! You rascal, so you like’em young, do you?’
Des Esseintes shrugged his shoulders.
‘No, you’re wide of the mark there,’ he said; ‘very wide of the mark. The truth is that I’m simply trying to make a murderer of the boy. See if you can follow my line of argument. The lad’s a virgin and he’s reached the age where the blood starts coming to the boil. He could, of course, just run after the little girls of his neighbourhood, stay decent and still have his bit of fun, enjoy his little share of the tedious happiness open to the poor. But by bringing him here, by plunging him into luxury such as he’s never known and will never forget, and by giving him the same treat every fortnight, I hope to get him into the habit of these pleasures which he can’t afford. Assuming that it will take three months for them to become absolutely indispensable to him – and by spacing them out as I do, I avoid the risk of jading his appetite – well, at the end of those three months, I stop the little allowance I’m going to pay you in advance for being nice to the boy. And to get the money to pay for his visits here, he’ll turn burglar, he’ll do anything if it helps him on to one of your divans in one of your gaslit rooms.
‘Looking on the bright side of things, I hope that, one fine day, he’ll kill the gentleman who turns up unexpectedly just as he’s breaking open his desk. On that day my object will be achieved: I shall have contributed, to the best of my ability, to the making of a scoundrel, one enemy the more for the hideous society which is bleeding us white.’
The woman gazed at him with open-eyed amazement.
‘Ah, there you are!’ he exclaimed, as he caught sight of Auguste sneaking back into the room, all red and sheepish, and hiding behind his Jewess. ‘Come on, my boy, it’s getting late. Say good night to the ladies.’
Going downstairs, he explained to him that once a fortnight he could pay a visit to Madame Laure’s without spending a sou. And then as they stood outside on the pavement, he looked the bewildered child in the face and said:
‘We shan’t see each other again. Hurry off home to your father, whose hand must be itching for work to do, and remember this almost evangelic dictum: Do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.’
‘Good night, sir.’
‘One other thing. Whatever you do, show a little gratitude for what I’ve done for you, and let me know as soon as you can how you’re getting on – preferably through the columns of the Police Gazette.’
Now, sitting by the fire and stirring the glowing embers, he muttered to himself:
‘The little Judas! To think that I’ve never once seen his name in the papers! It’s true, of course, that I haven’t been able to play a close game, in that I couldn’t guard against certain obvious contingencies – the danger of old mother Laure swindling me, pocketing the money and not delivering the goods; the chance of one of the women taking a fancy to Auguste, so that when his three months were up she let him have his fun on the nod; and even the possibility that the handsome Jewess’s exotic vices had already scared the boy, who may have been too young and impatient to bear her slow preliminaries or enjoy her savage climaxes. So unless he’s been up against the law since I came to Fontenay and stopped reading the papers, I’ve been diddled.’
He got to his feet and took a few turns round the room.
‘That would be a pity, all the same,’ he went on, ‘because all I was doing was parabolizing secular instruction, allegorizing universal education, which is well on the way to turning everybody into a Langlois: instead of permanently and mercifully putting out the eyes of the poor, it does its best to force them wide open, so that they may see all around them lives of less merit and greater comfort, pleasures that are keener and more voluptuous, and therefore sweeter and more desirable.
‘And the fact is,’ he added, following this line of thought still further, ‘the fact is that, pain being one of the consequences of education, in that it grows greater and sharper with the growth of ideas, it follows that the more we try to polish the minds and refine the nervous systems of the under-privileged, the more we shall be developing in their hearts the atrociously active germs of hatred and moral suffering.’
The lamps were smoking. He turned them up and looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. He lit a cigarette and gave himself up again to the perusal, interrupted by his dreaming, of the old Latin poem, De Laude Castitatis, written in the reign of Gondebald by Avitus, Metropolitan Bishop of Vienne.1
CHAPTER 7
Beginning on the night when, for no apparent reason, he had conjured up the melancholy memory of Auguste Langlois, Des Esseintes lived his whole life over again.
He found he was now incapable of understanding a single word of the volumes he consulted; his very eyes stopped reading, and it seemed as if his mind, gorged with literature and art, refused to absorb any more.
He had to live on himself, to feed on his own substance, like those animals that lie torpid in a hole all winter. Solitude had acted on his brain like a narcotic, first exciting and stimulating him, then inducing a languor haunted by vague reveries, vitiating his plans, nullifying his intentions, leading a whole cavalcade of dreams to which he passively submitted, without even trying to get away.
The confused mass of reading and meditation on artistic themes that he had accumulated since he had been on his own like a barrage to hold back the current of old memories, had suddenly been carried away, and the flood was let loose, sweeping away the present and the future, submerging everything under the waters of the past, covering his mind with a great expanse of melancholy, on the surface of which there drifted, like ridiculous bits of flotsam, trivial episodes of his existence, absurdly insignificant incidents.
The book he happened to be holding would fall into his lap, and he would give himself up to a fearful and disgusted review of his dead life, the years pivoting round the memory of Auguste and Madame Laure as around a solid fact, a stake planted in the midst of swirl
ing waters. What a time that had been! – a time of elegant parties, of race-meetings and card-games, of love-potions ordered in advance and served punctually on the stroke of midnight in his pink boudoir! Faces, looks, meaningless words came back to him with the haunting persistence of those popular tunes you suddenly find yourself humming and just as suddenly and unconsciously you forget.
This phase lasted only a little while and then his memory took a siesta. He took advantage of this respite to immerse himself once more in his Latin studies, in the hope of effacing every sign, every trace of these recollections. But it was too late to call a halt; a second phase followed almost immediately on the first, a phase dominated by memories of his youth, and particularly the years he had spent with the Jesuit Fathers.
These memories were of a more distant period, yet they were clearer than the others, engraved more deeply and enduringly in his mind; the thickly wooded park, the long paths, the flower-beds, the benches – all the material details were conjured up before him.
Then the gardens filled up, and he heard the shouting of the boys at play, and the laughter of their masters as they joined in, playing tennis with their cassocks hitched up in front, or else chatting with their pupils under the trees without the slightest affectation or pomposity, just as if they were talking to friends of their own age.
He recalled that paternal discipline which deprecated any form of punishment, declined to inflict impositions of five hundred or a thousand lines, was content with having unsatisfactory work done over again while the others were at recreation, resorted more often than not to a mere reprimand and kept the child under active but affectionate surveillance, forever trying to please him, agreeing to whatever walks he suggested on Wednesday afternoons, seizing the opportunity afforded by all the minor feast-days of the Church to add cakes and wine to the ordinary bill of fare or to organize a picnic in the country – a discipline which consisted of reasoning with the pupil instead of brutalizing him, already treating him like a grown man yet still coddling him like a spoilt child.