Against Nature by J.K. Huysmans

Author:J.K. Huysmans
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Philosophy, Classics
ISBN: 9780192823670
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1884-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘All that,’ he muttered, interrupted in his reflections by a sudden feeling of faintness, ‘doesn’t alter the fact that I shall have to beware of these delicious, atrocious experiments, which are just wearing me out.’

He heaved a sigh.

‘Ah, well, that means more pleasures to cut down on, more precautions to take!’ – and he shut himself up in his study, hoping that there he would find it easier to escape from the obsessive influence of all these perfumes.

He threw the window wide open, delighted to take a bath of fresh air; but suddenly it struck him that the breeze was bringing with it a whiff of bergamot oil, mingled with a smell of jasmine, cassia and rose-water. He gave a gasp of horror, and began to wonder whether he might not be in the grip of one of those evil spirits they used to exorcize in the Middle Ages. Meanwhile the odour, though just as persistent, underwent a change. A vague scent of tincture of Tolu, Peruvian balsam and saffron, blended with a few drops of musk and amber, now floated up from the sleeping village at the foot of the hill; then all at once the metamorphosis took place, these scattered whiffs of perfume came together, and the familiar scent of frangipane, the elements of which his sense of smell had detected and recognized, spread from the valley of Fontenay all the way to the Fort, assailing his jaded nostrils, shaking anew his shattered nerves and throwing him into such a state of prostration that he fell fainting, almost dying, across the window-sill.

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