of low cavatinas and indecent quadrilles played
in churches converted to boudoirs and surrendered to stage actors
whose voices resounded aloft, their impurity tainting the tones of the
holy organ.

For years he had obstinately refused to take part in these pious
entertainments, contenting himself with his memories of childhood. He
even regretted having heard the _Te Deum_ of the great masters, for he
remembered that admirable plain-chant, that hymn so simple and solemn
composed by some unknown saint, a Saint Ambrose or Hilary who, lacking
the complicated resources of an orchestra and the musical mechanics of
modern science, revealed an ardent faith, a delirious jubilation,
uttered, from the soul of humanity, in the piercing and almost
celestial accents of conviction.

Des Esseintes' ideas on music were in flagrant contradiction with the
theories he professed regarding the other arts. In religious music, he
approved only of the monastic music of the Middle Ages, that emaciated
music which instinctively reacted on his nerves like certain pages of
the old Christian Latin. Then (he freely confessed it) he was
incapable of understanding the tricks that the contemporary masters
had introduced into Catholic art. And he had not studied music with
that passion which had led him towards painting and letters. He played
indifferently on the piano and after many painful attempts had
succeeded in reading a score, but he was ignorant of harmony, of the
technique needed really to understand a nuance, to appreciate a
finesse, to savor a refinement with full comprehension.

In other respects, when not read in solitude, profane music is a
promiscuous art. To enjoy music, one must become part of that public
which fills the theatres where, in a vile atmosphere, one perceives a
loutish-looking man butchering episodes from Wagner, to the huge
delight of the ignorant mob.

He had always lacked the courage to plunge in this mob-bath so as to
listen to Berlioz' compositions, several fragments of which had
bewitched him by their passionate exaltations and their vigorous
fugues, and he was certain that there was not one single scene, not
even a phrase of one of the operas of the amazing Wagner which could
with impunity be detached from its whole.

The fragments, cut and served on the plate of a concert, lost all
significance and remained senseless, since (like the chapters of a
book, completing each other and moving to an inevitable conclus