A snapping sound was heard, the molar had broken while
being extracted. It seemed that his head was
being shattered, that his skull was being smashed;
he lost his senses, howled as loudly as he could,
furiously defending himself from the man who rushed
at him anew as if he wished to implant his whole arm
in the depths of his bowels, brusquely recoiled a
step and, lifting the tooth attached to the jaw, brutally
let him fall back into the chair. Breathing heavily,
his form filling the window, he brandished at one
end of his forceps, a blue tooth with blood at one
end.
Faint and prostrate, Des Esseintes spat blood into
a basin, refused with a gesture, the tooth which the
old woman was about to wrap in a piece of paper and
fled, after paying two francs. Expectorating blood,
in his turn, down the steps, he at length found himself
in the street, joyous, feeling ten years younger,
interested in every little occurrence.
“Phew!” he exclaimed, saddened by the
assault of these memories. He rose to dissipate
the horrible spell of this vision and, returning to
reality, began to be concerned with the tortoise.
It did not budge at all and he tapped it. The
animal was dead. Doubtless accustomed to a sedentary
existence, to a humble life spent underneath its poor
shell, it had been unable to support the dazzling
luxury imposed on it, the rutilant cope with which
it had been covered, the jewels with which its back
had been paved, like a pyx.
With the sharpening of his desire to withdraw from
a hated age, he felt a despotic urge to shun pictures
representing humanity striving in little holes or
running to and fro in quest of money.
With his growing indifference to contemporary life
he had resolved not to introduce into his cell any
of the ghosts of distastes or regrets, but had desired
to procure subtle and exquisite paintings, steeped
in ancient dreams or antique corruptions, far removed
from the manner of our present day.
For the delight of his spirit and the joy of his eyes,
he had desired a few suggestive creations that cast
him into an unknown world, revealing to him the contours
of new conjectures, agitating the nervous system by
the violent deliriums, complicated nightmares, nonchalant
or atrocious chimerae they induced.
Among these were some executed by an artist whose
genius allured and entranced him: Gustave Moreau.
Des Esseintes had acquired his two masterpieces and,
at night, used to sink into revery before one of them—a
representation of Salome, conceived in this fashion:
A throne, resembling the high altar of a cathedral,
reared itself beneath innumerable vaults leaping from
heavy Romanesque pillars, studded with polychromatic
bricks, set with mosaics, incrusted with lapis lazuli
and sardonyx, in a palace that, like a basilica, was
at once Mohammedan and Byzantine in design.
