Joris-Karl Huysmans

Reading or dreaming, he would soak himself in solitude until nightfall; by dint of always mulling over the same thoughts his mind became more concentrated and his as yet indeterminate ideas matured. After every holiday he went back to his teachers more thoughtful and more stubborn; these changes did not escape them; perspicacious and astute, trained by their calling to probe the deepest levels of the soul, they were not taken in by this lively but intractable intelligence

The young man was filled with inexpressible pity for those mummies buried in their elaborately panelled Pompadour-style hypogea, for those morose sluggards who lived with their gaze permanently fixed on a nebulous Canaan, an imaginary Palestine.