[Dome-news] Tes was then seventeen years of age. He retained but a vague mem

[Robbyn <sh...@pg...>]

Rch had never concealed the esteem it had for science, called heresies
impure miasmas, and treated Buddhism and other religions with such
contempt that he apologized for even soiling his Catholic prose by
onslaught on their doctrines. At times, religious passion breathed a
certain ardor into his oratorical language, under the ice of which
seethed a violent current; in his numerous writings on Dante, on Saint
Francis, on the author of _Stabat Mater_, on the Franciscan poets, on
socialism, on commercial law and every imaginable subject, this man
pleaded for the defense of the Vatican which he held indefectible, and
judged causes and opinions according to their harmony or discord with
those that he advanced. This manner of viewing questions from a single
viewpoint was also the method of that literary scamp, Nettement, whom
some people would have made the other's rival. The latter was less
bigoted than the master, affected less arrogance and admitted more
worldly pretentions. He repeatedly left the literary cloister in which
Ozanam had imprisoned himself, and had read secular works so as to be
able to judge of them. This province he entered gropingly, like a child
in a vault, seeing nothing but shadow around him, perceiving in this
gloom only the gleam of the candle which illumed the place a few paces
before him. In this gloom, uncertain of his bearings, he stumbled at
every turn, speaking of Murger who had "the care of a chiselled and
carefully finished style"; of Hugo who sought the noisome and unclean
and to whom he dared compare De Laprade; of Paul Delacroix who scorned
the rules; of Paul Delaroche and of the poet Reboul, whom he praised
because of their apparent faith. Des Esseintes could not restrain a
shrug of the shoulders before these stupid opinions, covered by a
borrowed prose whose already worn texture clung or became torn at each
phrase. In a different way, the works of Poujoulat and Genoude,
Montalembert, Nicolas and Carne failed to inspire him with any definite
interest. His taste for history was not pronounced, even when treated
with the scholarly fidelity and harmonious style of the Duc de Broglie,
nor was his p