Against the Grain | Page 6

light and shade; ignoring the
bourgeoisie, whose eyes are insensible to the pomp and splendor of
strong, vibrant tones; and devoting himself only to people with
sensitive pupils, refined by literature and art, he was convinced that the
eyes of those among them who dream of the ideal and demand illusions
are generally caressed by blue and its derivatives, mauve, lilac and
pearl grey, provided always that these colors remain soft and do not
overstep the bounds where they lose their personalities by being
transformed into pure violets and frank greys.

Those persons, on the contrary, who are energetic and incisive, the
plethoric, red-blooded, strong males who fling themselves unthinkingly
into the affair of the moment, generally delight in the bold gleams of
yellows and reds, the clashing cymbals of vermilions and chromes that
blind and intoxicate them.
But the eyes of enfeebled and nervous persons whose sensual appetites
crave highly seasoned foods, the eyes of hectic and over-excited
creatures have a predilection toward that irritating and morbid color
with its fictitious splendors, its acid fevers--orange.
Thus, there could be no question about Des Esseintes' choice, but
unquestionable difficulties still arose. If red and yellow are heightened
by light, the same does not always hold true of their compound, orange,
which often seems to ignite and turns to nasturtium, to a flaming red.
He studied all their nuances by candlelight, discovering a shade which,
it seemed to him, would not lose its dominant tone, but would stand
every test required of it. These preliminaries completed, he sought to
refrain from using, for his study at least, oriental stuffs and rugs which
have become cheapened and ordinary, now that rich merchants can
easily pick them up at auctions and shops.
He finally decided to bind his walls, like books, with coarse-grained
morocco, with Cape skin, polished by strong steel plates under a
powerful press.
When the wainscoting was finished, he had the moulding and high
plinths painted in indigo, a lacquered indigo like that which
coachmakers employ for carriage panels. The ceiling, slightly rounded,
was also lined with morocco. In the center was a wide opening
resembling an immense bull's eye encased in orange skin--a circle of
the firmament worked out on a background of king blue silk on which
were woven silver seraphim with out-stretched wings. This material
had long before been embroidered by the Cologne guild of weavers for
an old cope.
The setting was complete. At night the room subsided into a restful,

soothing harmony. The wainscoting preserved its blue which seemed
sustained and warmed by the orange. And the orange remained pure,
strengthened and fanned as it was by the insistent breath of the blues.
Des Esseintes was not deeply concerned about the furniture itself. The
only luxuries in the room were books and rare flowers. He limited
himself to these things, intending later on to hang a few drawings or
paintings on the panels which remained bare; to place shelves and book
racks of ebony around the walls; to spread the pelts of wild beasts and
the skins of blue fox on the floor; to install, near a massive fifteenth
century counting-table, deep armchairs and an old chapel reading-desk
of forged iron, one of those old lecterns on which the deacon formerly
placed the antiphonary and which now supported one of the heavy
folios of Du Cange's Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis.
The windows whose blue fissured panes, stippled with fragments of
gold-edged bottles, intercepted the view of the country and only
permitted a faint light to enter, were draped with curtains cut from old
stoles of dark and reddish gold neutralized by an almost dead russet
woven in the pattern.
The mantel shelf was sumptuously draped with the remnant of a
Florentine dalmatica. Between two gilded copper monstrances of
Byzantine style, originally brought from the old Abbaye-au-Bois de
Bievre, stood a marvelous church canon divided into three separate
compartments delicately wrought like lace work. It contained, under its
glass frame, three works of Baudelaire copied on real vellum, with
wonderful missal letters and splendid coloring: to the right and left, the
sonnets bearing the titles of La Mort des Amants and L'Ennemi; in the
center, the prose poem entitled, Anywhere Out of the World--n'importe
ou, hors du monde.
Chapter 3
After selling his effects, Des Esseintes retained the two old domestics
who had tended his mother and filled the offices of steward and house
porter at the Chateau de Lourps, which had remained deserted and

uninhabited until its disposal.
These servants he brought to Fontenay. They were accustomed to the
regular life of hospital attendants hourly serving the patients their
stipulated food and drink, to the rigid silence of cloistral monks who
live behind barred doors and windows, having no communication with
the outside world.
The man was