5
Oh incomprehensible pederasts, I shall not heap insults upon your great degradation; i shall not be the one to pour scorn on your infundibuliform anus. It is enough that the shameful and almost incurable maladies which besiege you should bring with them their unfailing punishments. Legislators of stupid institutions, founders of a narrow morality, depart from me, for I am an impartial soul. And you, young adolescents, or rather young girls, explain to me how and why (but keep a safe distance, for I, too, am unable to control my passions), vengeance has so sprouted in your hearts that you could leave such a crown of sores on the flanks of mankind. You make it blush at its sons by your conduct (which I venerate!); your prostitution which offers itself to the first comer, taxes the logic of the deepest thinkers, while your extreme sensibility crowns the stupefaction of woman herself. Are you of a more or less earthly nature than your fellow-beings? Do you possess a sixth sense which we lack? Do not lie, and say what you think. This is not a question I am putting to you; for since as an observer I have been frequenting the sublimity of your intelligence, I know how matters stand. Blessed be you by my left hand and sanctified by my right hand, angels protected by my universal love. I kiss your faces, I kiss your breasts, I kiss, with my smooth lips, the different parts of your harmonious and perfumed bodies. Why did you not tell me immediately what you were, crystallizations of superior moral beauty? I had to guess for myself the innumerable treasures of tenderness and chastity hidden by the beatings of your oppressed hearts. Breasts bedecked with rose-garlands and vetiver. I had to open your legs to know you, I had to place my mouth over the insignia of your shame. But (I must stress this), do not forget to wash the skin of your lower parts with hot water every day for, if you do not, venereal chancres will infallibly grow on the commissures of my unsatisfied lips. Oh! if, instead of being a hell, the universe had only been an immense celestial anus, look at the motion I am making with my loins: yes, I would have thrust my verge into its bleeding sphincter, shattering, with my jerking movements, the very walls of its pelvis! Misery would not then have blown into my blinded eyes from entire dunes of moving sand; I should have discovered the subterranean place where truth lies sleeping and the rivers of my viscous sperm would thus have found an ocean into which they could gush. But why do I find myself regretting an imaginary state of affairs which will never bear the stamp of final accomplishment? Let us not trouble to construct fleeting hypotheses. Meanwhile, let him who burns with ardour to share my bed come and find me; but I make one condition for my hospitality: he must not be more than fifteen years old. Let him not, on his part, think that I am thirty; what difference does that make? Age does not lessen the intensity of emotions, far from it; and though my hair has become white as snow, it is not from age: on the contrary, it is for the reason you know. I do not like woman! nor even hermaphrodites! I need beings who are the same as me, on whose brows human nobility is graven in more distinct, ineffaceable characters. Are you sure that those whose hair is long are of the same nature as I? I do not believe so, and I will abandon my opinion. Bitter saliva is flowing from my mouth, I do not know why. Who will suck it for me, that I may be rid of it? It is rising...it is still rising! I have noticed that when I suck blood from the throats of those who sleep beside me (the supposition that I am a vampire is false, since that is the name given to the dead who rise from their graves; whereas I am living), I throw up part of it on the following day: this is the explanation of the vile saliva. What do you expect me to do, now that my organs, weakened by vice, refuse to accomplish the functions of digestion? But do not reveal these confidences to anyone. It is not for my own sake that I am telling you this; it is for yourself and the others, that the influence of the secret I have imparted should keep within the bounds of duty and virtue those who, magnetized by the electricity of the unknown, would be tempted to imitate me. Be so good as to look at my mouth (for the moment I have no time to use a longer formula of politeness); at first sight it strikes you by its appearance; there is no need to bring the snake into your comparison; it is because I am contracting the tissue as far as it will possibly go, to give the impression that I am cold of temperament. But you really know that the diametrical opposite is true. If only I could see the face of him who is reading me through these seraphic pages. If he has not passed puberty, let him approach. Hold me tight against you, and do not be afraid of hurting me; let us contract our muscles. More. I feel it is futile to continue. The opacity of this piece of paper, remarkable in more ways than one, is a most considerable obstacle to our complete union. I have always had a perverse fancy for schoolboys and the emaciated children of the factories. My words are not the recollections of a dream, and I would have too many memories to disentangle if I were obliged to describe all those events which by their evidence could corroborate the veracity of my woeful statement. Human justice has not yet caught me in the act, despite the expertise of its policemen. I even murdered (not long ago!) a pederast who was not responding adequately to my passion; I threw his body down a disused well, and there is no decisive evidence against me. Why are you quivering with fear, young adolescent reading me? Do you think I want to do the same thing to you? You are being extremely unjust...You are right: do not trust me, especially if you are handsome. My sexual parts perpetually offer the lugubrious spectacle of turgescence; no one can claim (and how many have approached!) that he has ever seen them in the normal flaccid state, not even the shoeblack who stabbed me there in a moment of ecstasy! The ungrateful wretch! I change my clothes twice a week; cleanliness, however, is not the principal motive for my resolution. If I did not act thus, the members of mankind would disappear after a few days, in prolonged struggles. In fact, whatever country I am in, they continually harass me with their presence, and come and lick the surface of my feet. But what power can my drops of sperm possess, that they attract everything which breathes through olfactory nerves to them! They come from the banks of the Amazon, they cross the valleys watered by the Ganges, they abandon the polar lichen on long journeys in search of me, they ask the unmoving cities whether they have glimpsed, passing along their ramparts, him whose sacred sperm sweetens the mountains, the lakes, the heaths, the promontories, the immensity of the seas! Despair at not being able to find me (I secretly hide in the most inaccessible places to inflame their ardour) drives them to the most deplorable acts. They stand, three hundred thousand on each side, and the roaring of the cannons serves as a prelude to the battle. Each flank moves at the same time, like a single warrior. Squares are formed and then immediately fall, never to rise again. The terrified horses flee in all directions. Cannonballs plough up the ground like implacable meteors. The scene of the battle is now but a field of carnage, when night reveals its presence and the silent moon appears through a break in the clouds. Pointing out a space of several leagues strewn with corpses, the vaporous crescent of that star orders me to consider for a moment, as the subject of meditative reflections, the fatal consequences which the inexplicable enchanted talisman that Providence granted me, leaves in its wake. Unfortunately it will take many more centuries before the human race completely perishes as a result of my perfidious snare. Thus it is that a clever but by no means bombastic mind uses, to achieve its ends, the very means which would at first appear to present an insuperable obstacle to their achievement. My intelligence always soars towards this imposing question, and you yourself are witness that it is no longer possible for me to remain within the bounds of the modest subject which I had planned to deal with at the outset. A final word...it was a winter night. While the cold wind whistled through the firs, the Creator opened his doors in the darkness and showed a pederast in.
6
Silence! a funeral procession is passing by you. Bend both your knee-caps to the ground and intone a song from beyond the grave (if you consider my words rather as a simple form of the imperative than as a formal order which is out of place, you will be showing your wit, which is of the best). It is possible that you will thus succeed in extremely g
laddening the dead man's soul, which is going to rest from this life in a grave. As far as I am concerned, the fact is certain. Note that I do not say that your opinion might not to a certain extent be the opposite of mine; but what is extremely important is to have exact notions of the bases of morality, so that everyone should be imbued with the principle which commands us to do unto others what one would perhaps like to have done unto oneself. The priest of religions is the first to begin the march, holding in one hand a white flag, sign of peace, and in the other a golden emblem representing the genitals of man and woman, as if to indicate that these carnal members are, most of the time, all metaphor apart, very dangerous instruments in the hands of those who use them, when the blindly manipulate them for mutually conflicting ends, instead of bringing about a timely reaction against the well-known passion which causes almost all our ills. To the small of his back is attached (artificially, of course) a horse-tail with thick hair, which sweeps the dust of the ground. It means that we should not by our behaviour debase ourselves to the level of animals. The coffin knows its way and follows behind the floating tunic of the comforter. The parents and friends of the dead person, to judge from their position, have decided to bring up the rear of the cortege. It advances majestically like a vessel on the open sea, cleaving the waves, unafraid of the phenomenon of sinking; for at the present moment, tempests and reefs are conspicuous by their explicable absence. Crickets and toads follow the funeral, at some paces' distance; they, too, are not unaware that their humble presence at the obsequies of whoever it is will one day be counted in their favour. They converse in undertones in their picturesque language (do not be so presumptuous, permit me to give you this disinterested piece of advice, as to believe that you alone possess the precious capacity of conveying your thoughts and feelings), about him whom they had often seen running over the green meadows and plunging the sweat of his limbs in the bluish waves of the arenaceous gulfs. At first, life seemed to smile on him without any hidden intentions; and crowned him with flowers, magnificently; but since your intelligence itself perceives, or rather guesses, that he has been cut off at the bounds of childhood, I do not need, until the appearance of a truly necessary retraction, to continue the prolegomena of my rigorous demonstration. Ten years. A number that can be exactly counted on the fingers of both hands. It is a little and it is a lot. In the case which now preoccupies us I shall rely on your love of truth for you to pronounce with me, without a second's delay, that it is a little. And when I briefly reflect on these dark mysteries by which a human being disappears from the earth as easily as a fly or a dragon-fly, without a hope of returning, I find myself brooding with bitter regret on the fact that I shall probably not live long enough to explain to you what I cannot claim to understand myself. But since it is proven that by some extraordinary chance I have not yet lost my life, since the distant moment when, filled with terror, I began the previous sentence, I reckon that it will not be futile to compose here a complete confession of my total incapacity, especially when, as at present, it is a question of this imposing and intractable problem. It is, generally speaking, a strange thing, this captivating tendency which leads us to seek out (and then to express) the resemblances and differences which are hidden in the most natural properties of objects which are sometimes the least apt to lend themselves to sympathetically curious combinations of this kind, which, on my word of honour, graciously enhance the style of the writer who treats himself to this personal satisfaction, giving him the ridiculous and unforgettable aspect of an eternally serious owl. Let us therefore follow the current which is carrying us along. The royal kite has wings which are proportionally longer than a buzzard's, and a far more effortless flight: so he spends his life in the air. He hardly ever rests, and every day covers immense distances; and this vast movement is not at all a hunting exercise, nor the pursuit of prey, nor even a journey of discovery; for he does not hunt; but it seems that flying is his natural state, his favorite condition. One cannot help admiring the way in which he carries it out. His long narrow wings do not seem to move; the tail thinks it is directing operations, and it is not mistaken: it is moving incessantly. He soars without effort; he swoops as if he were gliding down an inclined plane; he seems to be swimming rather than flying. He speeds up his career, he slows down and remains hanging, hovering in the same place for hours on end. One cannot perceive the least movement of his wings; you can open your eyes as wide as a furnace door, it will do you no good. Everyone will have the good sense to confess without demure (though a little grudgingly) that he cannot at first sight perceive the relation, however distant it might be, which I am trying to point out between the beauty of the royal kite's flight and that of the child's face, rising like a water-lily piercing the surface of the water; and that is precisely in what the unforgivable fault consists: the fault of permanent impenitence about the deliberate ignorance in which we wallow. This relation of calm majesty between the two terms of my arch comparison is already a too common and even a sufficiently comprehensible symbol for me to be surprised any more at what can only be excused by that very quality of vulgarity which calls down upon everything it touches a deep feeling of unjust indifference. As if we ought to wonder less at the things we see every day! At the entrance to the cemetery, the procession is anxious to stop; its intention is to go no further. The gravedigger puts the final touches to the grave; the coffin is lowered into it with all the precautions normally taken in such cases; a few shovelfuls of earth over the child's body. The priest of religions, amid the deeply-moved audience, pronounces a few words to bury the boy even more in the imaginations of those present. 'He says he is very surprised that so many tears are being shed over such an insignificant act. Those are his exact words. But he fears he cannot adequately describe what he claims is an unquestionable happiness. If he had believed, in his innocence, that death was so fearsome, he would have renounced this duty, so as not to increase the rightful sorrow of the many relatives and friends of the dead child; but a secret voice warns him to give them some words of consolation, which will not be without effect, even if they only give them a glimpse of the hope of a reunion in heaven between the dead child and those who survived him.' Maldoror was racing along at full gallop and seemed to be heading for the walls of the cemetery. The steed's hooves raised a false crown of dust around its master. You cannot know the name of this horseman; but I do. He was coming nearer and nearer; his platinum face was beginning to be visible, although its lower half was completely enveloped in a cloak which the reader has taken care not to let slip from his memory, and which meant that only his eyes could be seen. In the middle of his speech, the priest of religions suddenly turns pale, for his ear recognizes the fitful gallop of the famous horse which never abandoned its master. 'Yes,' he added once more, 'I have great confidence that you will meet again; then we will understand better than ever before how to interpret the temporary separation of body and soul. Whoever believes that he is truly living on this earth is lulling himself with an illusions which it is essential to dispel, and quickly.' The sound of the gallop grew louder and louder; and as the horseman, hugging the horizon, came into the field of vision of the cemetery gate, rapid as a tornado, the priest of religions, in more solemn tones, resumed: 'You do not seem to realize that this child, whom sickness allowed to know only the first phases of life, and whom the grave has just taken to its breast, is indubitably living; but let me tell you that he whose equivocal outline you see riding on a sinewy horse, and on whom I ask you as soon as possible to fix your eyes, for he is now but a dot and will soon disappear into the heath, though he has lived long, is the only dead man.'
7
Every night, at the hour when sleep has reached its highest degree of intensity, an old spider of the large species slowly protrudes its head from a hole in the ground at one of the intersections of the angles of the room. It listens carefully, to hear if any rustling sound is still moving its mandibles in the atmosphere. Given its insect conformation, it can do no less, if it
means to increase the treasures of literature with brilliant personifications, than to attribute the mandibles to the rustling sound. When it has ascertained that silence reigns all around, it draws out, one after the other, without the help of meditation, the several parts of its body, and advances with slow, deliberate steps towards my bed. And a remarkable thing happens! I, who can repulse sleep and nightmares, feel paralysed through my entire body when with its long ebony legs it climbs along my satin bed. It clasps my throat with its legs and with its abdomen it sucks my blood. As simple as that! How many litres of deep reddish liquor, the same of which you know well, has it not drunk, since it started going through this same procedure with perseverance worthy of a nobler cause. I do not know what I have done to it that it should act in this way towards me. Did I inadvertently tread on one of its legs? Did I take away from some of its little ones? These two hypotheses, which are both highly suspect, do not bear serious scrutiny; it is even quite easy for them to make me shrug my shoulders and bring a smile to my lips, though one ought never to laugh at anyone. Take care, black tarantula; if your behaviour does not have an irrefutable syllogism to justify it, one night I will awaken with a start, and with a final effort of my dying will, I shall break the spell by which you paralyse my limbs, and crush you between the bones of my fingers like a piece of pulpy substance. Yet I vaguely recall that I have been given permission for your legs to climb over my breast; and from there on to the skin which covers my face; that consequently I have no right to do violence to you. Oh, who will untangle my disordered memories? As a reward I will give him whatever is left of my blood; including the last drop, there will be at least enough to fill the bacchanal cup. He speaks, and takes off his clothes as he does so. He rests one leg on the mattress and, pressing down on the sapphire floor with the other in order to raise himself up, he is now in a horizontal position. He has resolved not to close his eyes, to await his enemy unflinchingly. But does he not make the same resolution each time and is it not each time frustrated by the inexplicable image of his fatal promise? He says no more, and sadly resigns himself to what is to come; for to him his oath is sacred. He swathes himself majestically in the folds of his silk, disdains to tie together the tassels of his curtains and, resting the wavy ringlets of his long black hair on the velvet of his pillow, touches the wound on his neck where the tarantula has got into the habit of residing as a second nest, his face breathing satisfaction all the while. He is hoping that the present night (hope with him!) will see the last performance of the immense suction; for his only wish is that his torturer should put an end to his existence; death, that is all he asks. Look at this old spider of the large species, slowly protruding its head from a hole in the ground at one of the intersections of the room. We are no longer in the narrative. It listens carefully to hear if any rustling sound is still moving its mandibles in the atmosphere. Alas! We have now come to reality as far as the tarantula is concerned and, though one could perhaps put exclamation marks at the end of each sentence, that is perhaps not a reason for dispensing with them altogether! It has ascertained that silence reigns all around; now look at it, drawing out, one after the other, without the help of meditation, the several parts of its body, and advancing with slow, deliberate steps towards the solitary man's bed. Briefly it pauses; but its moment of hesitation is short. It says that the time has not yet come for it to cease its tortures and that it must first give the condemned man some plausible reasons to explain what determined the perpetuality of his punishment. It has climbed up to the beside the sleeping man's ear. If you do not wish to miss a single word of what it is about to say, exclude all the irrelevant occupations which block up the portico of your mind and be thankful at least for the interest I am showing in you by enabling you to be present at dramatic scenes which seem to me to be truly worthy of arousing your attention, for what could stop me keeping to myself the events I am recounting? 'Awaken, amorous flame of bygone days, fleshless skeleton. The time has come to hold back the arm of justice. We will not keep you waiting long for the explanation you desire. You can hear us, can you not? But do not move your limbs; today you are still under our magnetic power and your encephalic atony persists: it is the last time. What impression does the face of Elsseneur make on your imagination? You have forgotten it! And that Reginald, with his proud bearing, have you graven his features on your retentive brain? Look at him hiding in the folds of the curtains; his mouth is moving down towards your brow; but he does not dare speak to you, for he is more timid than I. I am going to recount to you an episode from your youth, and put you back on the path of memory...' A long time before this the spider's abdomen had opened up and from it two youths in blue robes had sprung out, each with a flaming sword in his hand, and they had gone to take up their position at the side of the bed, as if from that moment on to guard the sanctuary of sleep. 'The latter, who still has not taken his eyes off you, for he loved you very much, was the first of us two to whom you gave your love. But you often hurt him by the hardness and abruptness of your character. For his part he continually made every effort to avoid giving you any cause for complaint: no angel would have succeeded in this. You asked him, one day, if he would like to come swimming with you near the sea-shore. Like two swans, both at the same time, you plunged from the high cliff. Eminent divers, you glided into the watery mass, your outstretched hands joined. For some minutes you swam underwater. You reappeared far from there, your hair wet and tangled, streaming with salt water. But what mysterious event could have taken place underwater that a long trail of blood should be seen on the waves? Resurfacing, you continued to swim, and pretended not to notice the growing weakness of your companion. He was rapidly losing strength, and you only lengthened your strokes towards the misty horizon, which appeared as a watery blur. The wounded man was uttering cries of distress, and you pretended you were deaf. Reginald called out your name three times, so that its syllables echoed over the sea, and three times you answered with a cry of delight. He was too far from the shore to reach it and was vainly struggling to follow in your wake, in order to reach you and rest his hand on your shoulder for a moment. The fruitless pursuit continued for an hour, with his strength failing and yours perceptibly increasing. Giving up all hope of keeping up with you, he said a short prayer, and gave himself up into God's hands, then turned his back as we do when we are floating, so that his heart could be seen beating violently against his breast. In this way he waited for death to arrive, that he might have to wait no more. At this moment your powerful limbs had disappeared from sight and were still moving away, rapid as a plummeting sound-line. A boat which had been casting nets came into those parts. The fishermen assumed that Reginald had been shipwrecked and hauled him, unconscious, into their little vessel. The presence of a wound on his right side was noted: every one of those experienced sailors expressed the opinion that no jagged reef or splinter of rock was capable of piercing a hole at once so microscopic and so deep. Only a cutting weapon such as a stiletto of the sharpest kind could claim the paternity of such a fine wound. He himself always refused to tell of the several phases of the dive into the bowels of the waves and he has kept his secret until now. Tears now flow along his rather discoloured cheeks, and fall on the sheets: recollection is often more bitter than the thing itself. But I shall feel no pity: that would be showing too much respect for you. Do not roll your wild eyes in their sockets. Remain calm. You know you cannot move. Besides, I have not finished my tale. Lift up your sword, Reginald, and do not so easily forget revenge. Who knows? Perhaps one day it could come and reproach you.--Later you imagined yourself afflicted with remorse, the existence of which must have been ephemeral; you resolved to atone for your sin by choosing another friend, whom you would revere and honour. By this expiatory means, you were to efface the stains of the past and lavish on him who was to become your second victim the affection you had not been able to show to the first. A vain hope; character does not change from one day to the next, and your will remained consistent with itself. I,
Elsseneur, saw you for the first time and from that moment on I could not forget you. We looked at each other for a few seconds, and you started to smile. I lowered my eyes, for I saw a supernatural flame burning in yours. I wondered if, under cover of blackest night, you had not secretly descended to us from the surface of a star; for I must confess, now that there is no need for dissimulation, that you were not at all like the boars of mankind; but a halo of glittering rays surrounded by the periphery of your brow. I would have wished to enter into intimate relations with you; but I did not dare approach the striking novelty of this strange nobility, and an unrelenting terror prowled around me. Why did I not listen to these warnings of conscience? Well-founded presentiments. Noticing my hesitation, you blushed in turn and held out your arms. I bravely put my hand in yours and after this action I felt stronger; thenceforward the breath of your intelligence had passed into me. With our hair blowing in the wind and inhaling the breath of the breeze, we walked on through groves thick with lentiscus, jasmine, pomegranate and orange-trees, the scents of which intoxicated us. A boar in full flight brushed against our clothes as it rushed past, and a tear fell from its eyes when it saw me with you; I could not explain its behaviour. At nightfall we arrived at the gates of a populous city. The outlines of the domes, the spires of the minarets and the marble balls of the belvederes stood out with their sharp indentations in the darkness against the deep blue of the sky. But you did not wish to rest in that place, although we were overwhelmed with fatigue. We slunk along the lower part of the outer fortifications, like jackals of the night; we avoided the sentinels on watch; and we managed, by the opposite gate, to get clear of that solemn gathering of reasonable animals, civilized as beavers. The flight of the lantern-fly, the crackling of dry grass, the intermittent howls of a distant wolf accompanied us in the darkness of our dubious walk across the countryside. What were the valid motives for fleeing the hives of men? With a certain anxiety I asked myself this question; besides my legs were beginning to give way under me, having borne me up for too long. At last we reached the edge of a thick wood, the trees of which were entwined in a mass of high, inextricable bindweed, parasite plants, and cacti with monstrous spikes. You stopped in front of a birch. You told me to kneel down and prepare to die; you granted me a quarter of an hour to leave this earth. Some furtive glances you had secretly stolen while I was not observing you during our long walk, as well as certain strange and unaccountable gestures, immediately came to mind, like the open pages of a book. My suspicions had been confirmed. As I was too weak to put up a struggle, you knocked me to the ground, as the hurricane blows down the leaves of the aspen. With one of your knees on my breast and the other on the damp grass, while one of your hands clasped my two arms in its vice, I saw your other hand take a knife from the sheath which hung from your belt. My resistance was negligible, and I closed my eyes. The dull thud of cattle's hooves could be heard in the distance, the sound carried by the wind. It was advancing like a train, goaded on by the herdsman's stick and the barking jaws of a dog. There was no time to lose, and you knew it; fearing you would not be able to achieve your ends, since the unexpected arrival of help had increased my muscular strength, and seeing that you could only pin down one of my arms at a time, you merely cut off my right hand with a flick of the steel blade. The hand, precisely severed, fell to the ground. You took flight, while I was blinded with pain. I shall not tell of how the herdsman came to my assistance, nor how long I took to recover. Suffice it to know that this treacherous act which I had not expected made me wish to seek death. I took part in battles, to expose my breast to fatal blows. I won fame on the fields of battle; my name struck fear into the very bravest, such carnage and destruction did my artificial arm sow in the enemy ranks. However, one day, when the shells were thundering far louder than usual and the squadron of horse, drawn away from their ranks, were whirling around like straws beneath the tornado of death, a horseman, fearless in his bearing, came towards me to fight for the palm of victory. The two armies stopped fighting and stood rooted to teh spot in silent contemplation of us. We fought for a long time, riddled with wounds, our helmets smashed. By common accord, we ceased the struggle in order to rest and then to take it up again with renewed ferocity. Filled with admiration for his adversary, each one raises his visor: 'Elsseneur!' 'Reginald!' those were the simple words that our panting hearts uttered, both at once. The latter, having fallen into despairing and inconsolable gloom, had taken up arms as I had done, and he too had been spared by the bullets. In what strange circumstances we were now reunited! But your name was not pronounced! He and I swore eternal friendship; but it was most assuredly different from the first two occasions, on which you were the main actor! An archangel from heaven, the Lord's messenger, commanded us to change into a single spider and come to suck your throat every night, until an order from on high should put an end to your punishment. For nearly ten years we have stayed by your bedside, and from today you are delivered from our persecution. The vague promise of which you spoke was not made to us but to the Being who is stronger than you: you yourself understood that it was better to submit to this irrevocable decree. Awake, Maldoror! The hypnotic spell which has weighed on your cerebro-spinal system for two lustra is broken.' He awakens as ordered and sees two celestial forms disappearing into the sky, holding hands. He does not attempt to go back to sleep. Slowly, moving one limb after the other, he gets out of bed. He goes over to his gothic fireplace, to warm his body by the embers of the fire. He is wearing only a shirt. He looks around for the crystal carafe, that he may moisten his dry palate. He opens the shutters of the window. He leans on the window-sill. He contemplates the moon which sheds on his breast a cone of ecstatic rays which flutter like moths with silver beams of ineffable softness. He waits for morning with its change of scenery to bring its derisory relief to his shattered heart.
Maldoror and Poems Page 17