Là-bas by J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
page 54 of 341 (15%)
page 54 of 341 (15%)
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inevitable ruin with it, he had loved for its own sake when he was rich.
It was in fact toward the year 1426, when his coffers bulged with gold, that he attempted the 'great work' for the first time. "We shall find him, then, bent over his retorts in the château de Tiffauges. That is the point to which I have brought my history, and now I am about to begin on the series of crimes of magic and sadism." "But all this," said Des Hermies, "does not explain how, from a man of piety, he was suddenly changed into a Satanist, from a placid scholar into a violator of little children, a 'ripper' of boys and girls." "I have already told you that there are no documents to bind together the two parts of this life so strangely divided, but in what I have been narrating you can pick out some of the threads of the duality. To be precise, this man, as I have just had you observe, was a true mystic. He witnessed the most extraordinary events which history has ever shown. Association with Jeanne d'Arc certainly stimulated his desires for the divine. Now from lofty Mysticism to base Satanism there is but one step. In the Beyond all things touch. He carried his zeal for prayer into the territory of blasphemy. He was guided and controlled by that troop of sacrilegious priests, transmuters of metals, and evokers of demons, by whom he was surrounded at Tiffauges." "You think, then, that the Maid of Orleans was really responsible for his career of evil?" "To a certain point. Consider. She roused an impetuous soul, ready for anything, as well for orgies of saintliness as for ecstasies of crime. |
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