336
PARTISAN REVIEW
the sorry figure he cut in yielding to his animal and childlike impulses.
On
the other hand, the painstaking and patient progress he had
achieved in avarice must necessarily
be
the result of a perverse will
and hence an act of defiance against the Creator. Notwithstanding,
even when Duperrier began dropping pants buttons into the collec–
tion box at church, the brilliance and thickness of the halo remained
intact. This latest setback, duly noted, for some days left the pair
defenseless and nonplussed.
Prideful, gluttonous, choleric, envious, lazy and avaricious,
Duperrier still felt that his soul was steeped
in
the aroma of inno–
cence. The sins he had committed were mortal sins, to be sure, but
any child might confess them at first communion without despairing.
Only the
sin
of lust, deadly to a degree surpassing all the rest, terrified
him. The others, it seemed to
him,
were enacted almost outside the
range of God's vision. They left one a certain leeway: whether sin
or peccadillo depended on how far one went. Lust meant total acqui–
escence in the works of the devil. The nightly delights foreshadowed
the descent into the fiery depths of hell; the shooting tongues evoked
the darting of everlasting flames; the voluptuous sighs and confusion
of bodies were a preview of the wretched groans and wails of the
damned, the writhing flesh of a martyrdom without end. Not that
Duperrier had contemplated reserving lust for the end. He had from
the start simply refused to consider it. Even Madame Duperrier was
uncomfortable at the thought. So many of their years together had
now been spent in a state of blissful chastity and, until the halo, their
nights had been a succession of visions of cool, sweet sheets. On reflec–
tion, the memory of those nights of continence roused Madame
Duperrier to resentment, since she no longer doubted that the halo
had been tendered them
in
reward. Lust, and lust alone, could succeed
in undoing the lily-like nimbus of light.
Duperrier, after long resistance, was finally won over to
his wife's reasoning.
As
so often with
him,
duty prevailed over fear.
Madame Duperrier, who thought of everything, foreseeing his need
of guidance, had presented him with a revolting book which,
in
clear
and direct instructions, explained everything one was required to
know about lechery. The sight of this chaste man, seated beside his
wife of an evening, the halo girdling his forehead, reading aloud from
the loathsome manual, was a poignant one. Often his voice faltered
