Against the Grain | Page 3

races, they played lansquenet and baccarat, staked large fortunes on
horses and cards, and cultivated all the pleasures enchanting to
brainless fools. After a year's experience, Des Esseintes felt an

overpowering weariness of this company whose debaucheries seemed
to him so unrefined, facile and indiscriminate without any ardent
reactions or excitement of nerves and blood.
He gradually forsook them to make the acquaintance of literary men, in
whom he thought he might find more interest and feel more at ease.
This, too, proved disappointing; he was revolted by their rancorous and
petty judgments, their conversation as obvious as a church door, their
dreary discussions in which they judged the value of a book by the
number of editions it had passed and by the profits acquired. At the
same time, he noticed that the free thinkers, the doctrinaires of the
bourgeoisie, people who claimed every liberty that they might stifle the
opinions of others, were greedy and shameless puritans whom, in
education, he esteemed inferior to the corner shoemaker.
His contempt for humanity deepened. He reached the conclusion that
the world, for the most part, was composed of scoundrels and imbeciles.
Certainly, he could not hope to discover in others aspirations and
aversions similar to his own, could not expect companionship with an
intelligence exulting in a studious decrepitude, nor anticipate meeting a
mind as keen as his among the writers and scholars.
Irritated, ill at ease and offended by the poverty of ideas given and
received, he became like those people described by Nicole--those who
are always melancholy. He would fly into a rage when he read the
patriotic and social balderdash retailed daily in the newspapers, and
would exaggerate the significance of the plaudits which a sovereign
public always reserves for works deficient in ideas and style.
Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a
motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of
human stupidity.
A single passion, woman, might have curbed his contempt, but that, too,
had palled on him. He had taken to carnal repasts with the eagerness of
a crotchety man affected with a depraved appetite and given to sudden
hungers, whose taste is quickly dulled and surfeited. Associating with
country squires, he had taken part in their lavish suppers where, at

dessert, tipsy women would unfasten their clothing and strike their
heads against the tables; he had haunted the green rooms, loved
actresses and singers, endured, in addition to the natural stupidity he
had come to expect of women, the maddening vanity of female
strolling players. Finally, satiated and weary of this monotonous
extravagance and the sameness of their caresses, he had plunged into
the foul depths, hoping by the contrast of squalid misery to revive his
desires and stimulate his deadened senses.
Whatever he attempted proved vain; an unconquerable ennui oppressed
him. Yet he persisted in his excesses and returned to the perilous
embraces of accomplished mistresses. But his health failed, his nervous
system collapsed, the back of his neck grew sensitive, his hand, still
firm when it seized a heavy object, trembled when it held a tiny glass.
The physicians whom he consulted frightened him. It was high time to
check his excesses and renounce those pursuits which were dissipating
his reserve of strength! For a while he was at peace, but his brain soon
became over-excited. Like those young girls who, in the grip of puberty,
crave coarse and vile foods, he dreamed of and practiced perverse loves
and pleasures. This was the end! As though satisfied with having
exhausted everything, as though completely surrendering to fatigue, his
senses fell into a lethargy and impotence threatened him.
He recovered, but he was lonely, tired, sobered, imploring an end to his
life which the cowardice of his flesh prevented him from
consummating.
Once more he was toying with the idea of becoming a recluse, of living
in some hushed retreat where the turmoil of life would be muffled--as
in those streets covered with straw to prevent any sound from reaching
invalids.
It was time to make up his mind. The condition of his finances terrified
him. He had spent, in acts of folly and in drinking bouts, the greater
part of his patrimony, and the remainder, invested in land, produced a
ridiculously small income.

He decided to sell the Chateau de Lourps, which he no longer visited
and where he left no memory or regret behind. He liquidated his other
holdings, bought government bonds and in this way drew an annual
interest of fifty thousand francs; in addition, he reserved a sum of
money which he meant to use in buying and furnishing the house where
he proposed to enjoy a perfect repose.
Exploring the suburbs of the capital, he found a place for sale at the