Here, Des Esseintes was on firm ground.  He was thoroughly satisfied with this admission of social ordure, but he revolted against the vague hope of remedy in the beyond.  Schopenhauer was more true.  His doctrine and that of the Church started from common premises.  He, too, based his system on the vileness of the world; he, too, like the author of the Imitation of Christ, uttered that grievous outcry:  “Truly life on earth is wretched.”  He, also, preached the nothingness of life, the advantages of solitude, and warned humanity that no matter what it does, in whatever direction it may turn, it must remain wretched, the poor by reason of the sufferings entailed by want, the rich by reason of the unconquerable weariness engendered by abundance; but this philosophy promised no universal remedies, did not entice one with false hopes, so as to minimize the inevitable evils of life.

He did not affirm the revolting conception of original sin, nor did he feel inclined to argue that it is a beneficent God who protects the worthless and wicked, rains misfortunes on children, stultifies the aged and afflicts the innocent.  He did not exalt the virtues of a Providence which has invented that useless, incomprehensible, unjust and senseless abomination, physical suffering.  Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity:  “If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God.  The world’s wretchedness would rend my heart.”

Ah!  Schopenhauer alone was right.  Compared with these treatises of spiritual hygiene, of what avail were the evangelical pharmacopoeias?  He did not claim to cure anything, and he offered no alleviation to the sick.  But his theory of pessimism was, in the end, the great consoler of choice intellects and lofty souls.  He revealed society as it is, asserted woman’s inherent stupidity, indicated the safest course, preserved you from disillusionment by warning you to restrain hopes as much as possible, to refuse to yield to their allurement, to deem yourself fortunate, finally, if they did not come toppling about your ears at some unexpected moment.

Traversing the same path as the Imitation, this theory, too, ended in similar highways of resignation and indifference, but without going astray in mysterious labyrinths and remote roads.

But if this resignation, which was obviously the only outcome of the deplorable condition of things and their irremediability, was open to the spiritually rich, it was all the more difficult of approach to the poor whose passions and cravings were more easily satisfied by the benefits of religion.

These reflections relieved Des Esseintes of a heavy burden.  The aphorisms of the great German calmed his excited thoughts, and the points of contact in these two doctrines helped him to correlate them; and he could never forget that poignant and poetic Catholicism in which he had bathed, and whose essence he had long ago absorbed.