He has also a doll to whom he sighs, rhapsodises, and passes in its silent company hours of rapture. Villiers de l'Isle Adam evidently read Goethe: see his Eve of the Future. All of which shows the folly of certain critics who recognise in Huysmans the prime exemplar of the decadent--that much misunderstood word. But how about Goethe? A Rebours, notwithstanding Huysmans's later pilgrimage to Canossa, he never excelled. It is his most personal achievement. It also contains the most beautiful writing of this Paganini of prose. En Rade (1887) did not attract much attention. It is not dull; on the contrary, it is very Huysmansish. But it is not a subject that enthralls. Jacques Maries and his wife have lost their money. They go into the country to live cheaply. The author's detestation of nature was apparently the motive for writing the book. There are fantastic dreams worthy of H. G. Wells, and realistic descriptions of a calf's birth and a cat's agony; the last two named prove the one-time disciple of Zola had not lost his vision; the truth is, Zola's method is melodramatic, romantic, vague, when compared to Huysmans's implacable manner of etching petty facts. But in Là-Bas he takes a leap across the ditch of naturalism and reaches another, if not more delectable, territory. This was in 1891. A new manifesto must be made--the Goncourts had printed a bookful. Symbolism, not naturalism, is now the shibboleth. Huysmans declares that: It is essential to preserve the veracity of the document, the precision of detail, the fibrous and nervous language of Realism, but it is equally essential to become the well-digger of the soul, and not to attempt to explain what is mysterious by mental maladies.... It is essential, in a word, to follow the great toad so deeply dug out by Zola, but it is also necessary to trace a parallel pathway in the air, another road by which we may reach the Beyond, to achieve thus a Spiritual naturalism. And by a curious, a bizarre route Durtal, the everlasting Durtal, sought to achieve spiritually--a spirituality _à rebours_, for it was by devil-worship and the study of Gilles de Rais of ill-fame, that he reached his goal. We also study church bells, _incubi_, satanism, demons, witches, sacrileges of a _raffiné_ sort; indeed, an enormous amount of occult lumber is dumped into the book, which is indigestible on that account. Diabolic lore _à la_ Jules Dubois and other modern magi is profuse. That wicked lady, who is far from credible, Madame Chantelouve, flits through various chapters. Her final disappearance, one hopes "below"--like the devils in the pantomime--is received by Durtal and the reader with a sigh of relief. She is quite the vilest character in French fiction, and, as Stendhal would say, her only excuse is that she never existed. The Black Mass is painted by an artist adroit in the manipulation of the sombre and magnificent.