es of tripe dealers and mastiff snouts with
apoplectic necks, ears like tomatoes, vinous cheeks, blood-shot crazy
eyes, whiskers that looked like those of some big monkeys; farther
away, at the end of the wine store, a long row of tow-headed
individuals, their chins covered with white hair like the end of an
artichoke, reading, through a microscope, the tiny roman type of an
English newspaper; opposite him, a sort of American commodore, dumpy
and thick-set, with smoked skin and bulbous nose, was sleeping, a
cigar planted in the hairy aperture of his mouth. Opposite were frames
hanging on the wall enclosing advertisements of Champagne, the trade
marks of Perrier and Roederer, Heidsieck and Mumm, and a hooded head
of a monk, with the name of Dom Perignon, Rheims, written in Gothic
characters.

A certain enervation enveloped Des Esseintes in this guard house
atmosphere; stunned by the prattle of the Englishmen conversing among
themselves, he fell into a revery, evoking, before the purple port
which filled the glasses, the creatures of Dickens that love this
drink so very much, imaginatively peopling the cellar with new
personages, seeing here, the white head of hair and the ruddy
complexion of Mr. Wickfield; there, the phlegmatic, crafty face and
the vengeful eye of Mr. Tulkinghorn, the melancholy solicitor in
_Bleak House_. Positively, all of them broke away from his memory and
installed themselves in the _Bodega_, with their peculiar
characteristics and their betraying gestures. His memories, brought to
life by his recent readings, attained a startling precision. The city
of the romancer, the house illumined and warmed, so perfectly tended
and isolated, the bottles poured slowly by little Dorrit and Dora
Copperfield and Tom Pinch's sister, appeared to him sailing like an
ark in a deluge of mire and soot. Idly he wandered through this
imaginary London, happy to be sheltered, as he listened to the
sinister shrieks of tugs plying up and down the Thames. His glass was
empty. Despite the heavy fumes in this cellar, caused by the cigars
and pipes, he experienced a cold shiver when he returned to the
reality of the damp and fetid weather.

He called for a glass of amontillado, and suddenly, beside this pale,
dry wine, the lenitive, sweetish stories of the English author were
routed, to be replaced by the pitiless revulsives and the grievous
irritants of Edgar Allen Poe; the cold nightmares of _The Cask of
Amontillado_, of th