Never had he so execrated the flesh, never had he felt such repugnance and lassitude, as when he issued from that room. He strolled haphazard down the rue Soufflot, and the image of the unknown obsessed him, more irritating, more tenacious.
"I begin to understand the superstition of the succubus. I must try some bromo-exorcism. Tonight I will swallow a gram of bromide of potassium. That will make my senses be good."
But he realized that the trouble was not primarily physical, that really it was only the consequence of an extraordinary state of mind. His love for that which departed from the formula, for that projection out of the world which had recently cheered him in art, had deviated and sought expression in a woman. She embodied his need to soar upward from the terrestrial humdrum.
"It is those precious unworldly studies, those cloister thoughts picturing ecclesiastical and demoniac scenes, which have prepared me for the present folly," he said to himself. His unsuspected, and hitherto unexpressed, mysticism, which had determined his choice of subject for his last work was now sending him out, in disorder, to seek new pains and pleasures.
As he walked along he recapitulated what he knew of the woman. She was married, blonde, in easy circumstances because she had her own sleeping quarters and a maid. She lived in the neighbourhood, because she went to the rue Littré post-office for her mail. Her name, supposing she had prefixed her own initial to the name of Maubel, was Henriette, Hortense, Honorine, Hubertine, or Hélène. What else? She must frequent the society of artists, because she had met him, and for years he had not been in a bourgeois drawing-room. She was some kind of a morbid Catholic, because that word succubus was unknown to the profane. That was all. Then there was her husband, who, gullible as he might be, must nevertheless suspect their liaison, since, by her own confession, she dissembled her obsession very badly.
"This is what I get for letting myself be carried away. For I, too, wrote at first to amuse myself with aphrodisiac statements. Then I ended by becoming completely hysterical. We have taken turns fanning smouldering ashes which now are blazing. It is too bad that we have both become inflamed at the same time-for her case must be the same as mine, to judge from the passionate letters she writes. What shall I do? Keep on tantalizing myself for a chimera? No! I'll bring matters to a head, see her, and if she is good-looking, sleep with her. I shall have peace, anyway."
He looked about him. Without knowing how he had got there he found himself in the Jardin des Plantes. He oriented himself, remembered that there was a café on the side facing the quay, and went to find it.
He tried to control himself and write a letter at once ardent and firm, but the pen shook in his fingers. He wrote at a gallop, confessed that he regretted not having consented, at the outset, to the meeting she proposed, and, attempting to check himself, declared, "We must see each other. Think of the harm we are doing ourselves, teasing each other at a distance. Think of the remedy we have at hand, my poor darling, I implore you."
He must indicate a place of meeting. He hesitated. "Let me think," he said to himself. "I don't want her to alight at my place. Too dangerous. Then the best thing to do would be to offer her a glass of port and a biscuit and conduct her to Lavenue's, which is a hotel as well as a café. I will reserve a room. That will be less disgusting than an assignation house. Very well, then, let us put in place of the rue de la Chaise the waiting-room of the Gare Montparnasse. Sometimes it is quite empty. Well, that's done." He gummed the envelope and felt a kind of relief. "Ah! I was forgetting. Garçon! The Bottin de Paris."
He searched for the name Maubel, thinking that by some chance it might be her own. Of course it was hardly probable, but she seemed so imprudent that with her anything was to be expected. He might very easily have met a Mme. Maubel and forgotten her. He found a Maubé and a Maubec, but no Maubel. "Of course, that proves nothing," he said, closing the directory. He went out and threw his letter into the box. "The joker in this is the husband. But hell, I am not likely to take his wife away from him very long."
He had an idea of going home, but he realized that he would do no work, that alone he would relapse into daydream. "If I went up to Des Hermies's place. Yes, today was his consultation day, it's an idea."
He quickened his pace, came to the rue Madame, and rang at an entresol. The housekeeper opened the door.
"Ah, Monsieur Durtal, he is out, but he will be in soon. Will you wait?"
"But you are sure he is coming back?"
"Why, yes. He ought to be here now," she said, stirring the fire.
As soon as she had retired Durtal sat down, then, becoming bored, he went over and began browsing among the books which covered the wall as in his own place.
"Des Hermies certainly has some curious items," he murmured, opening a very old book. Here's a treatise written centuries ago to suit my case exactly. Manuale exorcismorum. Well, I'll be damned! It's a Plantin. And what does this manual have to recommend in the treatment of the possessed?
"Hmmm. Contains some quaint counter-spells. Here are some for energumens, for the bewitched; here are some against love-philtres and against the plague; against spells cast on comestibles; some, even, to keep butter and milk sweet. That isn't odd. The Devil entered into everything in the good old days. And what can this be?" In his hand he held two little volumes with crimson edges, bound in fawn-coloured calf. He opened them and looked at the title, The anatomy of the mass, by Pierre du Moulin, dated, Geneva, 1624. "Might prove interesting." He went to warm his feet, and hastily skimmed through one of the volumes. "Why!" he said, "it's mighty good."
On the page which he was reading was a discussion of the priesthood. The author affirmed that none might exercise the functions of the priesthood if he was not sound in body, or if any of his members had been amputated, and asking apropos of this, if a castrated man could be ordained a priest, he answered his own question, "No, unless he carries upon him, reduced to powder, the parts which are wanting." He added, however, that Cardinal Tolet did not admit this interpretation, which nevertheless had been universally adopted.
Durtal, amused, read on. Now du Moulin was debating with himself the point whether it was necessary to interdict abbés ravaged by lechery. And in answer he cited himself the melancholy glose of Canon Maximianus, who, in his Distinction 81, sighs, "It is commonly said that none ought to be deposed from his charge for fornication, in view of the fact that few can be found exempt from this vice."
"Why! You here?" said Des Hermies, entering. "What are you reading? The anatomy of the mass? Oh, it's a poor thing, for Protestants. I am just about distracted. Oh, my friend, what brutes those people are," and like a man with a great weight on his chest he unburdened himself.
"Yes, I have just come from a consultation with those whom the journals characterize as 'princes of science.' For a quarter of an hour I have had to listen to the most contradictory opinions. On one point, however, all agreed: that my patient was a dead man. Finally they compromised and decided that the poor wretch's torture should be needlessly prolonged by a course of moxas. I timidly remarked that it would be simpler to send for a confessor, and then assuage the sufferings of the dying man with repeated injections of morphine. If you had seen their faces! They came as near as anything to denouncing me as a tout for the priests.
"And such is contemporary science. Everybody discovers a new or forgotten disease, and trumpets a forgotten or a new remedy, and nobody knows a thing! And then, too, what good does it do one not to be hopelessly ignorant since there is so much sophistication going on in pharmacy that no physician can be sure of having his prescriptions filled to the letter? One example among many: at present, sirup of white poppy, the diacodia of the old Codex, does not exist. It is manufactured with laudanum and sirup of sugar, as if they were the same thing!