The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sac-Au-Dos, by Joris Karl Huysmans

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Title: Sac-Au-Dos
1907

Author: Joris Karl Huysmans

Release Date: October 27, 2007 [EBook #23216]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAC-AU-DOS ***

Produced by David Widger

SAC-AU-DOS

By Joris Karl Huysmans

Translated by L. G. Meyer.

Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son

As soon as I had finished my studies my parents deemed it useful to my
career to cause me to appear before a table covered with green cloth
and surmounted by the living busts of some old gentlemen who interested
themselves in knowing whether I had learned enough of the dead languages
to entitle me to the degree of Bachelor.

The test was satisfactory. A dinner to which all my relations, far
and near, were invited, celebrated my success, affected my future, and
ultimately fixed me in the law. Well, I passed my examination and got
rid of the money provided for my first year's expenses with a blond girl
who, at times, pretended to be fond of me.

I frequented the Latin Quarter assiduously and there I learned many
things; among others to take an interest in those students who blew
their political opinions into the foam of their beer, every night, then
to acquire a taste for the works of George Sand and of Heine, of Edgard
Quinet, and of Henri Murger.

The psychophysical moment of silliness was upon me.

That lasted about a year; gradually I ripened. The electoral struggles
of the closing days of the Empire left me cold; I was the son neither of
a Senator nor a proscript and I had but to outlive, no matter what the
regime, the traditions of mediocrity and wretchedness long since adopted
by my family. The law pleased me but little. I thought that the _Code_
had been purposely maldirected in order to furnish certain people with
an opportunity to wrangle, to the utmost limit, over the smallest
words; even today it seems to me that a phrase clearly worded can not
reasonably bear such diverse interpretation.

I was sounding my depths, searching for some state of being that I might
embrace without too much disgust, when the late Emperor