The next morning (or maybe that evening, I don’t remember: I spent the night of my defense alone and very drunk) I realized that part of my life, probably the best part, was behind me. Through all the years of my sad youth Huysmans remained a companion, a faithful friend never once did I doubt him, never once was I tempted to drop him or take up another subject then, one afternoon in June 2007, after waiting and putting it off as long as I could, even slightly longer than was allowed, I defended my dissertation, “Joris-Karl Huysmans: Out of the Tunnel,” before the jury of the University of Paris IV–Sorbonne.

In the end,” he told himself, as he rose and followed the last ones out, shepherded by the Swiss guard, “in the end, my heart is hardened and smoked dry by dissipation. I am revolted with my life, I am sick of myself, but so far from changing my ways! And yet … and yet … however troubled I am in these chapels, as soon as I leave them I become unmoved and dry. I hover on its outskirts, moved to tears by its prayers, touched to the very marrow by its psalms and chants. I am haunted by Catholicism, intoxicated by its atmosphere of incense and candle wax. “It would have been better than sitting here in the empty church, dreaming in my chair-but pray? I have no desire to pray.

“I should have tried to pray,” he thought. A noise recalled him to Saint-Sulpice the choir was leaving the church was about to close.

Miriam tor publishing