He opened the window wide, glad to be able to breath the air.  But it suddenly seemed to him that the breeze brought in a vague tide of bergamot with which jasmine and rose water were blent.  Agitated, he asked himself whether he was not really under the yoke of one of those possessions exercised in the Middle Ages.  The odor changed and was transformed, but it persisted.  A faint scent of tincture of tolu, of balm of Peru and of saffron, united by several drams of amber and musk, now issued from the sleeping village and suddenly, the metamorphosis was effected, those scattered elements were blent, and once more the frangipane spread from the valley of Fontenay as far as the fort, assailing his exhausted nostrils, once more shattering his helpless nerves and throwing him into such a prostration that he fell unconscious on the window sill.

Chapter 11

The servants were seized with alarm and lost no time in calling the Fontenay physician who was completely at sea about Des Esseintes’ condition.  He mumbled a few medical terms, felt his pulse, examined the invalid’s tongue, unsuccessfully sought to make him speak, prescribed sedatives and rest, promised to return on the morrow and, at the negative sign made by Des Esseintes who recovered enough strength to chide the zeal of his servants and to bid farewell to this intruder, he departed and was soon retailing through the village the eccentricities of this house whose decorations had positively amazed him and held him rooted to the spot.

To the great astonishment of the domestics, who no longer dared stir from the servants’ quarters, their master recovered in a few days, and they surprised him drumming against the window panes, gazing at the sky with a troubled look.

One afternoon the bells were peremptorily rung and Des Esseintes commanded his trunks to be packed for a long voyage.

While the man and the woman were choosing, under his guidance, the necessary equipment, he feverishly paced up and down the cabin of the dining room, consulted the timetables of the steamers, walked through his study where he continued to gaze at the clouds with an air at once impatient and satisfied.

For a whole week, the weather had been atrocious.  Streams of soot raced unceasing across the grey fields of the sky-masses of clouds like rocks torn from the earth.

At intervals, showers swept downward, engulfing the valley with torrents of rain.

Today, the appearance of the heavens had changed.  The rivers of ink had evaporated and vanished, and the harsh contours of the clouds had softened.  The sky was uniformly flat and covered with a brackish film.  Little by little, this film seemed to drop, and a watery haze covered the country side.  The rain no longer fell in cataracts as on the preceding evening; instead, it fell incessantly, fine, sharp and penetrating; it inundated the walks, covered the roads with its innumerable threads which joined heaven and earth.  The livid sky threw a wan leaden light on the village which was now transformed into a lake of mud pricked by needles of water that dotted the puddles with drops of bright silver.  In this desolation of nature, everything was gray, and only the housetops gleamed against the dead tones of the walls.