y designated under the
name of "water of the angels," was hardly sufficient to express the
cavalier graces, the rather crude tones of the period which certain
sonnets of Saint-Amand have preserved for us. Later, with myrrh and
olibanum, the mystic odors, austere and powerful, the pompous gesture
of the great period, the redundant artifices of oratorial art, the
full, sustained harmonious style of Bossuet and the masters of the
pulpit were almost possible. Still later, the sophisticated, rather
bored graces of French society under Louis XV, more easily found their
interpretation in the almond which in a manner summed up this epoch;
then, after the ennui and jadedness of the first empire, which misused
Eau de Cologne and rosemary, perfumery rushed, in the wake of Victor
Hugo and Gautier, towards the Levant. It created oriental
combinations, vivid Eastern nosegays, discovered new intonations,
antitheses which until then had been unattempted, selected and made
use of antique nuances which it complicated, refined and assorted. It
resolutely rejected that voluntary decrepitude to which it had been
reduced by the Malesherbes, the Boileaus, the Andrieuxes and the
Baour-Lormians, wretched distillers of their own poems.

But this language had not remained stationery since the period of
1830. It had continued to evolve and, patterning itself on the
progress of the century, had advanced parallel with the other arts.
It, too, had yielded to the desires of amateurs and artists, receiving
its inspiration from the Chinese and Japanese, conceiving fragrant
albums, imitating the _Takeoka_ bouquets of flowers, obtaining the
odor of _Rondeletia_ from the blend of lavender and clove; the
peculiar aroma of Chinese ink from the marriage of patchouli and
camphor; the emanation of Japanese _Hovenia_ by compounds of citron,
clove and neroli.

Des Esseintes studied and analyzed the essences of these fluids,
experimenting to corroborate their texts. He took pleasure in playing
the role of a psychologist for his personal satisfaction, in taking
apart and re-assembling the machinery of a work, in separating the
pieces forming the structure of a compound exhalation, and his sense
of smell had thereby attained a sureness that was all but perfect.

Just as a wine merchant has only to smell a drop of wine to recognize
the grape, as a hop dealer determines the exact value of hops by
sniffing a bag, as a Chinese trader can immediately tell the origin o