of the ideal. A sublime and
awful need.

A terrible thing, I say.

Is it a disease? Is it a remedy? Both. This noble yearning is at
the same time and for the same beings a chastisement and a reward; a
voluptuousness full of expiation; a chastisement for faults committed,
a recompense for sorrows borne! None may escape it. It is a hunger of
angels felt by demons. Saint Theresa experiences it, Messalina also.
This need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One
must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal. One is a
thief, one is a street-walker--all the more reason. The more one drinks
of the darkness of night the more is one thirsty for the light of dawn.
Schinderhannes becomes a cornflower, Poulailler a violet. Hence these
sinisterly ideal weddings.

And then, what happens?

What I have just said.

Cloaca, but abyss. Here the human heart opens partly, disclosing
unimaginable depths. Astarte becomes platonic. The miracle of the
transformation of monsters by love is being accomplished. Hell is being
gilded. The vulture is being metamorphosed into a bluebird. Horror
ends in the pastoral. You think you are at Vouglans's and
Parent-Duchatelet's; you are at Longus's. Another step and you will
stumble into Berquin's. Strange indeed is it to encounter Daphnis and
Chloe in the Forest of Bondy!

The dark Saint Martin Canal, into which the footpad pushes the passer-by
with his elbow as he snatches his victim's watch, traverses the Tender
and empties itself into the Lignon. Poulmann begs a ribbon bow; one is
tempted to present a shepherdess's crook to Papavoine. Through the straw
of the sabot one sees gossamer wings appearing on horrible heels. The
miracle of the roses is performed for Goton. All fatalities combined
have for result a flower. A vague Rambouillet Palace is superposed upon
the forbidding silhouette of the Salpetriere. The leprous wall of evil,
suddenly covered with blossoms, affords a pendant to the wreath of
Juliet. The sonnets of Petrarch, that flight of the ideal which soars in
the shadow of souls, venture through the twilight towards this abjection
and suffering, attracted by one knows not what obscure affinity, even
as a swarm of bees is sometimes seen humming over a dungheap from which
arises, perceptible to the bees alone and mingling with the miasms, the
perfume of a hidden flower. The gemoniae are Elysian. The chimerical
thread of celestial unions floats 'neath the dar