In _L'Art Moderne_, speaking of the water-colours of Forain, Huysmans attributes to them 'a specious and _cherche_ art, demanding, for its appreciation, a certain initiation, a certain special sense.' To realise the full value, the real charm, of _A Rebours_, some such initiation might be deemed necessary. In its fantastic unreality, its exquisite artificiality, it is the natural sequel of _En Menage_ and _A Vau-l'Eau_, which are so much more acutely sordid than the most sordid kind of real life; it is the logical outcome of that hatred and horror of human mediocrity, of the mediocrity of daily existence, which we have seen to be the special form of Huysmans' _nevrose_. The motto, taken from a thirteenth-century mystic, Rusbroeck the Admirable, is a cry for escape, for the 'something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all': _Il faut que je me rejouisse au-dessus du temps ... quoique le monde ait horreur de ma joie et que sa grossierete ne sache pas ce que je veux dire_. And the book is the history of a _Thebaide raffinee_--a voluntary exile from the world in a new kind of 'Palace of Art.' Des Esseintes, the vague but typical hero, is one of those half-pathological cases which help us to understand the full meaning of the word _decadence_, which they partly represent. The last descendant of an ancient family, his impoverished blood tainted by all sorts of excesses, Des Esseintes finds himself at thirty _sur le chemin, degrise, seul, abominablement lasse_. He has already realised that 'the world is divided, in great part, into swaggerers and simpletons.' His one desire is to 'hide himself away, far from the world, in some retreat, where he might deaden the sound of the loud rumbling of inflexible life, as one covers the street with straw, for sick people.' This retreat he discovers, just far enough from Paris to be safe from disturbance, just near enough to be saved from the nostalgia of the unattainable. He succeeds in making his house a paradise of the artificial, choosing the tones of colour that go best with candle-light, for it need scarcely be said that Des Esseintes has effected a simple transposition of night and day. His disappearance from the world has been complete; it seems to him that the 'comfortable desert' of his exile need never cease to be just such a luxurious solitude; it seems to him that he has attained his desire, that he has attained to happiness.