Books, first, passed before his eyes as far off and inaccessible things; then a binding tempted his hand, an unknown title, his attention. He felt the first titillations of fever, and gave himself up.
Now, one by one, he touched them, opened them, to acquire the certainty of the nothingness within; he grieved that a pleasant golden binding enclosed the gallant nonsense of little shivering verses of indigence, or the philosophism of a Diderot, or the worthless manuals of Jansenistic piety.
For a few sous he had just bought a treatise on simony and haggled eagerly with a rogue of a vendor for some Neo-Parnassian collections—recently received and already depreciated by the universal indifference—when a familiar hand was placed on his shoulder.
With a twisting movement, with a natural but sure insolence, he freed himself, then turned his head.
It was Marguerin, the theosophist, whose friends excused his licentious folly as a malady of the cerebellum. His play of features, strangely promising, seduced women in search of debasement: he was rich and subsidized an angelical review. This day, a fixed idea, which he confided to Entragues, gave his face an imbecile appearance.
"Dead! Perhaps you remember that blond girl, Maia!"
"His present phantasy," thought Hubert, "does not incite any repugnance. Have I not had the madness of eyes, and am I cured of it? Has not the vision of two large eyes ever been necessary to complete my happiness? It is strange that there should be this constant union of two sensations so different in kind, namely, visual sensation and spasm. Sick, ah! an innate and uncurable sickness!"
(While sipping absinthe:)
"Intoxication is a very noble passion, and I would like to acquire it.... Intoxication, one should rather say drunkenness, but philanthropists, have brought the word down to the humanitarian mud of their Anglican dissertations.... Alcoholism has been contaminated, no less.... Intoxication suffices. This absinthe is comforting. The blond Maia was perhaps loved by that wretch. She was lovely and here is what is left of it: a pathological regret. Why disdain intoxication? It is the most intellectual of passions; it does not depress like gambling; it does not weaken like love. Ah! what a godsend! Absinthe is not at all hurtful; it is green and concentrated wine. Is it not ideal to be able to arrive at intoxication with a single glass of liquid? The Orientals have opium, but for that is needed the Oriental sky. And then, to each one his own system. The important thing is that it remove you far from the world: everything that draws us away from ourselves is divine. How many times nevertheless, have I been drunk with pure contemplation! yes, that too is a method. All are salutary. I hate myself, I wish to live another life, I wish to correct ideally the infirmities inherent in my carnal state, I wish to deliver my soul from the miseries of my body ... I should love her from afar, as Guido loves his madonna. Contact is a destroyer of dreams. You will not know the book of love where I have beatified you, for it will disappear with desire, burned by the flames of your first kiss. The pyre that will open heaven for you will consume my forces: you will ascend upward through space and I will fall like Satan, I will fall into the infernal hells for eternity.... A singular declamation and quite difficult to justify! All this for some pleasure mutually shared by two beings who adore each other. The consequences of the union of the sexes are not at all so tragic, ordinarily ... I am very much upset. It is quite urgent that the denouement restores security to one of the actors. To bring things back to their true state: she will be troubled and I will be calmed—a very desirable result.
"For the aim of an intelligent life is not to live with the Princess of Trebizond, but to explain oneself in one's motives of action by deeds or by gestures. Writing reveals the inward act; it is much less important to feel than to know the order of sensation, and this is the mind's revenge on the body: nothing exists save through the Word. As well say that the Word alone exists. Saint John, the evangelist, knew it, and the Rajah Ramohun Roy knew it, and others: Om and Logos: it is the only science; when that is known everything is known. I will realize myself, accordingly, through the Word.... And you? What shall I do with you and your soul! Ah! Sixtine, your soul I shall drink, little by little, in nightly and daily celebrations, diluted in the saliva of your kisses,—like holy portions: you will have no existence save in me, and you will fortify me like a spiritual elixir. We shall be hermaphrodites. Thus will unity be brought about: and I shall have renounced, without renouncing you, the chimerical pursuit of a love external to myself. Ah! unity will not be ternary—sin against the rites! For I do not want carnal posterity. May my flesh be sterile and my mind fruitful! We shall beget dreams and with our thoughts we shall people the night of space. We shall talk, and our speech, diffused beyond the stars, will make the gloomy eternity of the ether vibrate eternally. We shall have gestures of love, and the signs of our love will be reflected in the innumerable mirrors of the molecules of light. Yes, we shall amuse ourselves with this illusion, in overturning Laws, by our phantasy, for we are not ignorant of the fact that the world dies of the caducity of thought which creates it and that the stars, as well as the nail of our little finger, will perish when death closes the eyes of the last man.