d between the spotted and superb epithet of Claudian and
Rutilius and the gamy epithet of the eighth century. In the French
language, no lapse of time, no succession of ages had taken place; the
stained and superb style of the de Goncourts and the gamy style of
Verlaine and Mallarme jostled in Paris, living in the same period,
epoch and century.

And Des Esseintes, gazing at one of the folios opened on his chapel
desk, smiled at the thought that the moment would soon come when an
erudite scholar would prepare for the decadence of the French language
a glossary similar to that in which the savant, Du Cange, has noted
the last murmurings, the last spasms, the last flashes of the Latin
language dying of old age in the cloisters and sounding its death
rattle.

Chapter 15

Burning at first like a rick on fire, his enthusiasm for the digester
as quickly died out. Torpid at first, his nervous dyspepsia
reappeared, and then this hot essence induced such an irritation in
his stomach that Des Esseintes was quickly compelled to stop using it.

The malady increased in strength; peculiar symptoms attended it. After
the nightmares, hallucinations of smell, pains in the eye and deep
coughing which recurred with clock-like regularity, after the pounding
of his heart and arteries and the cold perspiration, arose illusions
of hearing, those alterations which only reveal themselves in the last
period of sickness.

Attacked by a strong fever, Des Esseintes suddenly heard murmurings of
water; then those sounds united into one and resembled a roaring which
increased and then slowly resolved itself into a silvery bell sound.

He felt his delirious brain whirling in musical waves, engulfed in the
mystic whirlwinds of his infancy. The songs learned at the Jesuits
reappeared, bringing with them pictures of the school and the chapel
where they had resounded, driving their hallucinations to the
olfactory and visual organs, veiling them with clouds of incense and
the pallid light irradiating through the stained-glass windows, under
the lofty arches.

At the Fathers, the religious ceremonies had been practiced with great
pomp. An excellent organist and remarkable singing director made an
artistic delight of these spiritual exercises that were conducive to
worship. The organist was in love with the old masters and on holidays
celebrated masses by Palestrina and Orlando Lasso, psalms by Marcello,
oratorios by Handel, motets by Bac