rranged, the works of Barbey
d'Aurevilly were the only ones whose ideas and style offered the
gaminess he so loved to savor in the Latin and decadent, monastic
writers of past ages.

Chapter 13

As the season advanced, the weather, far from improving, grew worse.
Everything seemed to go wrong that year. After the squalls and mists,
the sky was covered with a white expanse of heat, like plates of sheet
iron. In two days, without transition, a torrid heat, an atmosphere of
frightful heaviness, succeeded the damp cold of foggy days and the
streaming of the rains. As though stirred by furious pokers, the sun
showed like a kiln-hole, darting a light almost white-hot, burning
one's face. A hot dust rose from the roads, scorching the dry trees,
and the yellowed lawns became a deep brown. A temperature like that of
a foundry hung over the dwelling of Des Esseintes.

Half naked, he opened a window and received the air like a furnace
blast in his face. The dining room, to which he fled, was fiery, and
the rarefied air simmered. Utterly distressed, he sat down, for the
stimulation that had seized him had ended since the close of his
reveries.

Like all people tormented by nervousness, heat distracted him. And his
anaemia, checked by cold weather, again became pronounced, weakening
his body which had been debilitated by copious perspiration.

The back of his shirt was saturated, his perinaeum was damp, his feet
and arms moist, his brow overflowing with sweat that ran down his
cheeks. Des Esseintes reclined, annihilated, on a chair.

The sight of the meat placed on the table at that moment caused his
stomach to rise. He ordered the food removed, asked for boiled eggs,
and tried to swallow some bread soaked in eggs, but his stomach would
have none of it. A fit of nausea overcame him. He drank a few drops of
wine that pricked his stomach like points of fire. He wet his face;
the perspiration, alternately warm and cold, coursed along his
temples. He began to suck some pieces of ice to overcome his troubled
heart--but in vain.

So weak was he that he leaned against the table. He rose, feeling the
need of air, but the bread had slowly risen in his gullet and remained
there. Never had he felt so distressed, so shattered, so ill at ease.
To add to his discomfort, his eyes distressed him and he saw objects
in double. Soon he lost his sense of distance, and his glass seemed to
be a league away. He told himself that he wa