En Route

by J.-K. Huysmans

He looked at his plate, with no courage to eat, no desire to drink; he breathed hard, and, exhausted as he was, could not keep in one place. He rose and wandered in the court till Compline, and there in the chapel, where at least he hoped to find some solace, was the crowning point of all; the mine went off; the soul, sapped since the morning, exploded.

On his knees, desolate, he tried again to invoke help, and nothing came; he choked, immured in so deep a trench, under a vault so thick, that every appeal was stifled, and no sound vibrated. Without courage, he wept with his head in his hands, and while he complained to God that He had brought him thither to punish him in a Trappist monastery, ignoble visions assailed him.

Fluids passed before his face, and peopled the space with priapisms. He did not see them with the eyes of his body, which were in no degree hallucinated, but perceived them outside him, and felt them within him; in a word, the touch was external, and the vision internal.

He tried to gaze on the statue of Saint Joseph, before which he kept himself, and to see nothing but it, but his eyes seemed to revolve, to see only within, and were filled with indecencies. It was a medley of apparitions with undecided outlines, and confused colours, which gained precision only in those parts coveted by the secular infamy of man. And this changed again. The human forms vanished. There remained only, in invisible landscapes of flesh, marshes reddened by the fires of what sunset it was impossible to say, marshes shuddering under the divided shelter of the grasses. Then the sensual spot grew smaller still, but remained, and this time did not move; it was the growth of an unclean flood, the spreading of the daisy of darkness, the unfolding of the lotos of the caverns, hidden at the bottom of the valley.

And there, burning gasps excited Durtal, enwrapped him, stifled him with furious gasps which drank his mouth.

He looked in spite of himself, unable to withdraw himself from the outrages imposed by these violations, but the body was still and remained calm, while the soul revolted with a groan; the temptation was then of no effect; but if the tricks only succeeded in suggesting to him disgust and horror, they made him suffer beyond measure, while they delayed; all the days of his shameful existence came to the surface, all these enticements to greedy desires crucified him. Joined to the sum of sorrows accumulated since the dawn, the overcharge of these sorrows overwhelmed him, and a cold sweat bathed him from head to foot.

He was in agony, and suddenly, as though he had come to overlook his ministers, and to see if his orders were carried out, the executioner himself entered on the scene. Durtal did not see him, but felt him, and it was indescribable. Since he had the impression of a real demoniac presence, his whole soul trembled and desired to fly, like a terrified bird that clings to the window-panes.

And it fell back exhausted; then unlikely as it may appear, the parts of his life were inverted, the body was upright, and held its own, commanding the terrified soul, repressed this panic in a furious tension.

Durtal perceived very plainly and clearly for the first time the distinction, the separation of the soul from the body, and for the first time also, he was conscious of the phenomenon of a body, which had so tortured its companion by its needs and wants, to forget all its hatred in the common danger, and hinder her who resisted it, the habit of sinking.

He saw that in a flash, and suddenly all vanished. It seemed that the Demon had taken himself off, the wall of darkness which encompassed Durtal opened, and light issued from all parts; with an immense impulse the "Salve Regina," springing up from the choir, swept aside the phantoms, and put the goblins to flight.