ond the
limits of painting and introduced a fantasy that was unique, the
fantasy of a diseased and delirious mind.

And, indeed, certain of these faces, with their monstrous, insane
eyes, certain of these swollen, deformed bodies resembling carafes,
induced in Des Esseintes recollections of typhoid, memories of
feverish nights and of the shocking visions of his infancy which
persisted and would not be suppressed.

Seized with an indefinable uneasiness in the presence of these
sketches, the same sensation caused by certain _Proverbs_ of Goya
which they recalled, or by the reading of Edgar Allen Poe's tales,
whose mirages of hallucination and effects of fear Odilon Redon seemed
to have transposed to a different art, he rubbed his eyes and turned
to contemplate a radiant figure which, amid these tormenting sketches,
arose serene and calm--a figure of Melancholy seated near the disk of
a sun, on the rocks, in a dejected and gloomy posture.

The shadows were dispersed as though by an enchantment. A charming
sadness, a languid and desolate feeling flowed through him. He
meditated long before this work which, with its dashes of paint
flecking the thick crayon, spread a brilliance of sea-green and of
pale gold among the protracted darkness of the charcoal prints.

In addition to this series of the works of Redon which adorned nearly
every panel of the passage, he had hung a disturbing sketch by El
Greco in his bedroom. It was a Christ done in strange tints, in a
strained design, possessing a wild color and a disordered energy: a
picture executed in the painter's second manner when he had been
tormented by the necessity of avoiding imitation of Titian.

This sinister painting, with its wax and sickly green tones, bore an
affinity to certain ideas Des Esseintes had with regard to furnishing
a room.

According to him, there were but two ways of fitting a bedroom. One
could either make it a sense-stimulating alcove, a place for nocturnal
delights, or a cell for solitude and repose, a retreat for thought, a
sort of oratory.

For the first instance, the Louis XV style was inevitable for the
fastidious, for the cerebrally morbid. Only the eighteenth century had
succeeded in enveloping woman with a vicious atmosphere, imitating her
contours in the undulations and twistings of wood and copper,
accentuating the sugary languor of the blond with its clear and lively
_decors_, attenuating the pungency of the brunette with its tapes