finger into his mouth. Muttering beneath his waxed
fang-like moustaches, he took an instrument from the table.

Then the play began. Clinging to the arms of his seat, Des Esseintes
felt a cold sensation in his cheek, and began to suffer unheard
agonies. Then he beheld stars. He stamped his feet frantically and
bleated like a sheep about to be slaughtered.

A snapping sound was heard, the molar had broken while being
extracted. It seemed that his head was being shattered, that his skull
was being smashed; he lost his senses, howled as loudly as he could,
furiously defending himself from the man who rushed at him anew as if
he wished to implant his whole arm in the depths of his bowels,
brusquely recoiled a step and, lifting the tooth attached to the jaw,
brutally let him fall back into the chair. Breathing heavily, his form
filling the window, he brandished at one end of his forceps, a blue
tooth with blood at one end.

Faint and prostrate, Des Esseintes spat blood into a basin, refused
with a gesture, the tooth which the old woman was about to wrap in a
piece of paper and fled, after paying two francs. Expectorating blood,
in his turn, down the steps, he at length found himself in the street,
joyous, feeling ten years younger, interested in every little
occurrence.

"Phew!" he exclaimed, saddened by the assault of these memories. He
rose to dissipate the horrible spell of this vision and, returning to
reality, began to be concerned with the tortoise.

It did not budge at all and he tapped it. The animal was dead.
Doubtless accustomed to a sedentary existence, to a humble life spent
underneath its poor shell, it had been unable to support the dazzling
luxury imposed on it, the rutilant cope with which it had been
covered, the jewels with which its back had been paved, like a pyx.

Chapter 6

With the sharpening of his desire to withdraw from a hated age, he
felt a despotic urge to shun pictures representing humanity striving
in little holes or running to and fro in quest of money.

With his growing indifference to contemporary life he had resolved not
to introduce into his cell any of the ghosts of distastes or regrets,
but had desired to procure subtle and exquisite paintings, steeped in
ancient dreams or antique corruptions, far removed from the manner of
our present day.

For the delight of his spirit and the joy of his eyes, he had desired
a few suggestive creations that cast him into an unkno