s the play-thing of
sensorial illusions and that he was incapable of reacting. He
stretched out on a couch, but instantly he was cradled as by the
tossing of a moving ship, and the affection of his heart increased. He
rose to his feet, determined to rid himself, by means of a digestive,
of the food which was choking him.

He again reached the dining room and sadly compared himself, in this
cabin, to passengers seized with sea-sickness. Stumbling, he made his
way to the closet, examined the mouth organ without opening any of the
stops, but instead took from a high shelf a bottle of benedictine
which he kept because of its form which to him seemed suggestive of
thoughts that were at once gently wanton and vaguely mystic.

But at this moment he remained indifferent, gazing with lack-lustre,
staring eyes at this squat, dark-green bottle which, at other times,
had brought before him images of the medieval priories by its
old-fashioned monkish paunch, its head and neck covered with a
parchment hood, its red wax stamp quartered with three silver mitres
against a field of azure and fastened at the neck, like a papal bull,
with bands of lead, its label inscribed in sonorous Latin, on paper
that seemed to have yellowed with age: _Liquor Monachorum
Benedictinorum Abbatiae Fiscannensis_.

Under this thoroughly abbatial robe, signed with a cross and the
ecclesiastic initials 'D.O.M.', pressed in between its parchments and
ligatures, slept an exquisitely fine saffron-colored liquid. It
breathed an aroma that seemed the quintessence of angelica and hyssop
blended with sea-weeds and of iodines and bromes hidden in sweet
essences, and it stimulated the palate with a spiritous ardor
concealed under a virginal daintiness, and charmed the sense of smell
by a pungency enveloped in a caress innocent and devout.

This deceit which resulted from the extraordinary disharmony between
contents and container, between the liturgic form of the flask and its
so feminine and modern soul, had formerly stimulated Des Esseintes to
revery and, facing the bottle, he was inclined to think at great
length of the monks who sold it, the Benedictines of the Abbey of
Fecamp who, belonging to the brotherhood of Saint-Maur which had been
celebrated for its controversial works under the rule of Saint Benoit,
followed neither the observances of the white monks of Citeaux nor of
the black monks of Cluny. He could not but think of them as being like
their brethre