Milt's eye roved over the books on a dozen shelves. "Ah! Here are your gods. Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Maurice Barrès--how I loathe that metaphysical dandy!--Nietzsche, unfortunate madman, Ibsen, Max Stirner, William Blake, another lunatic--a nice gang of mind-poisoners. With exception of Huysmans they are corrupters of youth. Listen to this----" and he opened on the last page of "À Rebours" 'Take pity, O Lord, on the Christian who doubts, on the sceptic who seeks to believe, on the convict of life, who embarks alone, in the night, beneath a sky no longer lit by the consoling beacons of ancient faith.' For me, that is the saddest sentence in all the music of your prose-men. Great artists? Yes. But guides to damnation. Moral anarchs, their teaching will lead to the anarchy of physical violence. Mark my words. All Europe will suffer sometime from their doctrines. As for your Barrès, while he is no longer the anarch of his Enemy of the Laws and is going in for nationalism nowadays, nevertheless his is a dilettante preciosity whose gift of assimilation is his prime quality. Also to be labelled 'dangerous', though only for the intellectual. He possesses a barren imagination. I grant you he writes supple, harmonious prose, though he is a mere neophyte compared with those charming princes of corruption, Ernest Renan and Anatole France. All your modern heroes, whom you resemble, Ulick, I am sorry to say, derive from that abominable Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Red and Black. The admirable antidote to that criminal, free-man, individualist, is Robert Greslou in Paul Bourget's Disciple. Therein you may see where unbridled indulgence, whether in thought or act, will lead a young man. What are you writing just now, Ulick?" Milt took up some sheets from the desk. "Oh, this a very bad. What next? 'Ideas and Images of Evil.' That's simply a Baudelairian title, and while that wonderful poet--yes, I won't deny that I have read him with more interest than the atheist Victor Hugo--recognized the existence of evil, of a personal devil, Satan or Lucifer, he didn't fall down and worship him." "How about the Litany of Satan"? interrupted Ulick. "It is to be read in a Manichean sense. It is objective" "And how about Carducci's Hymn to Satan? ('Inno a Satana') "Salute, O Satana O ribellione O forza vindice Della ragione."