[444] Who replied explosively.
[445] There used to be something of a controversy whether it should be thus or Aurévilly. But the modern editions, at least, never have the accent.
[446] Very little above it I should put the not wholly dissimilar liquor obtained, at great expense and trouble, by a late nobleman of high character and great ability from (it was said) an old monkish vineyard in the Isle of Britain. The monks must have exhausted the goodness of that clos; or else have taken the wine as a penance.
[447] Huysmans on this is very funny.
[448] A Spanish duchess of doubly and trebly "azured" blood revenges herself on her husband, who has massacred her lover before her eyes and given his heart to dogs, by becoming a public prostitute in Paris, and dying in the Salpêtrière. It is almost, if not quite, a masterpiece.
[449] Barbey's dislike of Feuillet was, evidently and half-confessedly, increased by his notion that M. de Camors had "lifted" something from L'Ensorcelée. There is also perhaps a touch of Le Bonheur dans le Crime in La Morte.
[450] He knew a good deal (quite independently of Byron and Brummel) about English literature. One is surprised to find somewhere a reference to Walpole's story of Fielding and his dinner-companions.
[451] Observe that this is no demand for the explanation of the supernatural. Let the supernatural remain as it is, by all means. But curses should have causes. Até and Weird are terrible goddesses, but they are not unreasonable ones. They might be less terrible if they were.
[452] He has for two years been ordered to be present, but forbidden to celebrate; in punishment for his having, uncanonically, fought as a Chouan—if not also for attempted suicide. But we hear of no amorousness, and the husband Le Hardouey's jealousy, though prompted by his wife's apparent self-destruction, is definitely stated to have no foundation in actual guilt with the priest. On the contrary, she declares that he cared nothing for her.
[453] Of Geoffroy Tory's book which (v. sup. Vol. I. p. 124) helped to give us the Limousin student.