Page:Arthur Machen, A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin.djvu/32

26 sier estoit bon raillard en son temps, aimant à boire net," and ends with the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, with the word "Trinch un mot panomphée, celebré et entendu de toutes nations, et nous signifie, beuvez." "And I refer you," continues Machen, "to the allocution of Bacbuc, the priestess of the Bottle, at large. 'By wine,' she says, 'is man made divine,' and I may say that if you have not got the key to these Rabelaisian riddles, much of the value—the highest value—of the book is lost to you."

Seeking the meaning of this Bacchic cultus, this apparent glorification of drunkenness in all lands and in all times, from Ancient Greece through Renascent France to Victorian England, by peoples and persons not themselves given to excess, he finds it again in the word ecstasy.

"We are to conclude that both the ancient people and the modern writers recognized ecstasy as the supreme gift and state of man, and that they chose the Vine and the juice of the Vine, as the most beautiful and significant symbol of that Power which withdraws a man from the common life and the common consciousness, and taking him from the dust of earth, sets him in high