Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/349

Rh torture. From thenceforth the poor devil no longer belonged to himself.

He tore himself from the arms of the street-walker only to get drunk with the ruffian.

He was saddled with all sorts of junk at exorbitant prices. He paid ten and twenty times their value in order to present them to friends, to those who had just loaded him with a bottle of outrageous perfume, with loud knick-knacks, with shell mirrors, with English cutlery, with imitation jewelry, claptrap and glass beads with which civilizers could no longer fascinate Kaffirs or Sioux. He was never allowed out alone, nor permitted to leave the confines of the district.

All day long he leaned against the bar of the public room. The walls were hung with placards: advertisements of Old Tom gin, the red triangles of pale ale, the brown squares of stout. Chromolithographs from Christmas Numbers alternated with epileptic pictures from the Police News, just as on the sideboard the sirups and elixirs tasting like pommade stood next to the corrosive liquors.

In order to obtain the right to perpetually gaze at the creature chosen for his affection, he swallowed all the poisons displayed. Little by little, under the influence of these libations, she seemed to take on the appearance of a madonna throned in a sanctuary: the smoke of his pipe became incense, the sideboard was reredos, the liquors composed the subjects of stained-glass windows, and spouting oraisons did not free him from the fervor of his stupidity. Then a mocking laugh would bring him back to the feeling of the place in which he found himself, and the goddess whom he invoked.

If his drunkenness turned into frenzy, if he made a