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The Devil holds the strings which move us!
In repugnant things we discover charms;
Every day we descend a step further toward Hell,
Without horror, through gloom that stinks.
Like a penniless
rake who with kisses and bites Tortures the breast of an old ***,
We steal as we pass by a clandestine pleasure
That we squeeze very hard like a dried up orange.
Serried,
like a million maggots, A legion of Demons
carouses in our brains,
And when we breathe,
Death, that unseen river, Descends into our lungs
with muffled wails.
But
among the jackals, the panthers,
the *** hounds, the apes, the scorpions, the vultures,
the serpents,
The yelping, howling, growling, crawling monsters, In the filthy menagerie
of our vices,
There is one
more ugly, more wicked, more filthy!
Although he makes neither great gestures nor great cries, He would willingly make of the earth a shambles.
And, in a yawn, swallow the world;
He is Ennui!
His eye watery as though with tears,
He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe. You know him reader,
that refined monster,
ó Hypocritish reader,
ó my fellow, ó
my brother!
Charles Baudelaire (Au Lector, Les Fleurs Du Mal)