ll of
coal wafted by the wind through the opened door. Des Esseintes was
incapable of moving a limb. A soft warm languor prevented him from
even stretching out his hand to light a cigar. He told himself: "Come
now, let us get up, we must take ourselves off." Immediate objections
thwarted his orders. What is the use of moving, when one can travel on
a chair so magnificently? Was he not even now in London, whose aromas
and atmosphere and inhabitants, whose food and utensils surrounded
him? For what could he hope, if not new disillusionments, as had
happened to him in Holland?

He had but sufficient time to race to the station. An overwhelming
aversion for the trip, an imperious need of remaining tranquil, seized
him with a more and more obvious and stubborn strength. Pensively, he
let the minutes pass, thus cutting off all retreat, and he said to
himself, "Now it would be necessary to rush to the gate and crowd into
the baggage room! What ennui! What a bore that would be!" Then he
repeated to himself once more, "In fine, I have experienced and seen
all I wished to experience and see. I have been filled with English
life since my departure. I would be mad indeed to go and, by an
awkward trip, lose those imperishable sensations. How stupid of me to
have sought to disown my old ideas, to have doubted the efficacy of
the docile phantasmagories of my brain, like a very fool to have
thought of the necessity, of the curiosity, of the interest of an
excursion!"

"Well!" he exclaimed, consulting his watch, "it is now time to return
home."

This time, he arose and left, ordered the driver to bring him back to
the Sceaux station, and returned with his trunks, packages, valises,
rugs, umbrellas and canes, to Fontenay, feeling the physical
stimulation and the moral fatigue of a man coming back to his home
after a long and dangerous voyage.

Chapter 12

During the days following his return, Des Esseintes contemplated his
books and experienced, at the thought that he might have been
separated from them for a long period, a satisfaction as complete as
that which comes after a protracted absence. Under the touch of this
sentiment, these objects possessed a renewed novelty to his mind, and
he perceived in them beauties forgotten since the time he had
purchased them.

Everything there, books, bric-a-brac and furniture, had an individual
charm for him. His bed seemed the softer by comparison with the hard
bed he would h