n of the Middle Ages, cultivating simples, heating
retorts and distilling faultless panaceas and prescriptions.

He tasted a drop of this liquor and, for a few moments, had relief.
But soon the fire, which the dash of wine had lit in his bowels,
revived. He threw down his napkin, returned to his study, and paced
the floor. He felt as if he were under a pneumatic clock, and a
numbing weakness stole from his brain through his limbs. Unable to
endure it longer, he betook himself to the garden. It was the first
time he had done this since his arrival at Fontenay. There he found
shelter beneath a tree which radiated a circle of shadow. Seated on
the lawn, he looked around with a besotted air at the square beds of
vegetables planted by the servants. He gazed, but it was only at the
end of an hour that he really saw them, for a greenish film floated
before his eyes, permitting him only to see, as in the depths of
water, flickering images of shifting tones.

But when he recovered his balance, he clearly distinguished the onions
and cabbages, a garden bed of lettuce further off, and, in the
distance along the hedge, a row of white lillies recumbent in the
heavy air.

A smile played on his lips, for he suddenly recalled the strange
comparison of old Nicandre, who likened, in the point of form, the
pistils of lillies to the genital organs of a donkey; and he recalled
also a passage from Albert le Grand, in which that thaumaturgist
describes a strange way of discovering whether a girl is still a
virgin, by means of a lettuce.

These remembrances distracted him somewhat. He examined the garden,
interesting himself in the plants withered by the heat, and in the hot
ground whose vapors rose into the dusty air. Then, above the hedge
which separated the garden below from the embankment leading to the
fort, he watched the urchins struggling and tumbling on the ground.

He was concentrating his attention upon them when another younger,
sorry little specimen appeared. He had hair like seaweed covered with
sand, two green bubbles beneath his nose, and disgusting lips
surrounded by a dirty white frame formed by a slice of bread smeared
with cheese and filled with pieces of scallions.

Des Esseintes inhaled the air. A perverse appetite seized him. This
dirty slice made his mouth water. It seemed to him that his stomach,
refusing all other nourishment, could digest this shocking food, and
that his palate would enjoy it as though it were