Having absolved such a man, he could without pharisaism absolve himself, and with the aid of God, some more humble and quite brotherly succor, of helpful reading, visitations to gentle conventual chapels, Huysmans one day found himself converted to mysticism, and wrote _En Route_, that book which is like a statue of stone that suddenly begins to weep. It is a mysticism a little raucous and hard, but like his phrases, his epithets, Huysmans is hard. Mysticism first came to him through the eyes rather than through the soul. He observed religious facts with the fear of being their dupe and the hope that they would be absurd; he was caught in the very meshes of the _credo-quia-absurdum_,--happy victim of his curiosity.
Now, fatigued at having watched men's hypocritical faces, he watches the stones, preparing a supreme book on "The Cathedral." There, if it is a question of feeling and understanding, is it especially a question of sight. He will see as no other person has seen, for no one other person has seen, no one ever was gifted with a glance so sharp, so boring, so frank and so skilled in insinuating himself into the very wrinkles of faces, rose-windows and masks.
In the _Fleurs de bonne Volonté_ is a little complaint, like the others, called _Dimanches_:
Le ciel pleut sans but, sans que rien l'émeuve, Il pleut, il pleut, bergère! sur le fleuve....
Le fleuve a son repos dominical; Pas un chaland, en amont, en aval.
Les vêpres carillonnent sur la ville, Les berges sont désertes, sans une île.
Passe un pensionnat, ô pauvres chairs! Plusieurs out déjà leurs manchons d'hiver.
Une qui n'a ni manchon ni fourrure Fait tout en gris une bien pauvre figure;
Et la voilà qui s'échappe des rangs Et court: ô mon Dieu, qu'est-ce qui lui prend?
Elle va se jeter dans le fleuve. Pas un batelier, pas un chien de Terre-Neuve....
And there we have, prophesized, the sudden absurd death, the life of Laforgue. His heart was too cold; he departed.
His was a mind gifted with all the gifts and rich with important acquisitions. With his natural genius made up of sensibility, irony, imagination and clairvoyance, he had wished to nourish it with positive knowledge, all the philosophies, all the literatures, all the images of nature and art; and even the latest views of science seemed to have been familiar to him. He had an ornate flamboyant genius, ready to construct architectural works infinitely diverse and fair, to rear new ogives and unfamiliar domes; but he had forgotten his winter muff and died one snowy day of cold.