The Vicomte Antoine raised an arm in a gesture of sanguine enthusiasm:
“The savor of such enjoyments never cloys, Monsieur; and while you are our guest, I hope to have the opportunity of revealing to you two wonders that Mortal Men have never learned to taste: Night, Monsieur, and Day. The age to which you belong has stubbornly and blindly limited its vision to the mechanical arts, seeking an absurd perfection of bodily comfort and well-being which is useless and contemptible once it has been attained. Your generation has quite lost sight of the gratifications that naturally come to life; and, losing these from view, it has of course lost the power to appreciate them. You, for instance, just a few hours ago, were walking with me out on the heath. It was raining and the night was menacing with storm. I am sure your mind was engrossed with the slippery muddy path, the cold wet bushes—all the discomforts, in short. Did you once raise your eyes to the romantic splendors with which we were surrounded—those frowning brows of the hills, their crests piercing the pearly mantle of mist and fog in aspiration toward that upper wrapping of transparent silver that Nature throws over her chilly shoulders?...”
I listened on in an amazement that for the moment quite mastered my anxiety. These atrocious demons, these vampires, cannibals indeed since they lived, after all, on human flesh and blood—how could they bring themselves to affect such delicate and poetic hypocrisies? And my thoughts went out to all the pitiable victims who entered that accursed House of the Secret, strong robust young men and women, and left it pale, fainting, emaciated invalids; all to the end that three beasts of prey might eschew “the false and disappointing joys of sensuous indulgence” for the higher ones that “purely spiritual pleasures bring.”
XXVII
The Count François stopped and looked at his father who still sat, or lay, motionless as a corpse in that singular dormeuse, half chair, half couch. Had there appeared on those utterly blank features some expression which I had not perceived? The count, at any rate, turned at once toward me, and said:
“Monsieur, we are almost ready. Think again, I beg of you. Is there really nothing you would like before the operation begins? Is there anything we can do for you within the limits you now know? Our earnest wish is to satisfy your slightest desire, if possible; and we hope you will enable us to demonstrate our best good will!”
I was about to shake my head from right to left, in sign of refusal, when an idea flashed across my mind, setting my whole being afire with a sudden glow. I checked myself, my eyes fixed upon my interlocutor, one hand raised, my lips opening to form a word.
“Do not hesitate, Monsieur,” the count encouraged.