He opened the window wide, glad to be able to breath
the air. But it suddenly seemed to him that the
breeze brought in a vague tide of bergamot with which
jasmine and rose water were blent. Agitated, he
asked himself whether he was not really under the yoke
of one of those possessions exercised in the Middle
Ages. The odor changed and was transformed, but
it persisted. A faint scent of tincture of tolu,
of balm of Peru and of saffron, united by several
drams of amber and musk, now issued from the sleeping
village and suddenly, the metamorphosis was effected,
those scattered elements were blent, and once more
the frangipane spread from the valley of Fontenay as
far as the fort, assailing his exhausted nostrils,
once more shattering his helpless nerves and throwing
him into such a prostration that he fell unconscious
on the window sill.
Chapter 11
The servants were seized with alarm and lost no time
in calling the Fontenay physician who was completely
at sea about Des Esseintes’ condition.
He mumbled a few medical terms, felt his pulse, examined
the invalid’s tongue, unsuccessfully sought to
make him speak, prescribed sedatives and rest, promised
to return on the morrow and, at the negative sign
made by Des Esseintes who recovered enough strength
to chide the zeal of his servants and to bid farewell
to this intruder, he departed and was soon retailing
through the village the eccentricities of this house
whose decorations had positively amazed him and held
him rooted to the spot.
To the great astonishment of the domestics, who no
longer dared stir from the servants’ quarters,
their master recovered in a few days, and they surprised
him drumming against the window panes, gazing at the
sky with a troubled look.
One afternoon the bells were peremptorily rung and
Des Esseintes commanded his trunks to be packed for
a long voyage.
While the man and the woman were choosing, under his
guidance, the necessary equipment, he feverishly paced
up and down the cabin of the dining room, consulted
the timetables of the steamers, walked through his
study where he continued to gaze at the clouds with
an air at once impatient and satisfied.
For a whole week, the weather had been atrocious.
Streams of soot raced unceasing across the grey fields
of the sky-masses of clouds like rocks torn from the
earth.
At intervals, showers swept downward, engulfing the
valley with torrents of rain.
Today, the appearance of the heavens had changed.
The rivers of ink had evaporated and vanished, and
the harsh contours of the clouds had softened.
The sky was uniformly flat and covered with a brackish
film. Little by little, this film seemed to drop,
and a watery haze covered the country side. The
rain no longer fell in cataracts as on the preceding
evening; instead, it fell incessantly, fine, sharp
and penetrating; it inundated the walks, covered the
roads with its innumerable threads which joined heaven
and earth. The livid sky threw a wan leaden light
on the village which was now transformed into a lake
of mud pricked by needles of water that dotted the
puddles with drops of bright silver. In this
desolation of nature, everything was gray, and only
the housetops gleamed against the dead tones of the
walls.
