The King in Yellow quotes

The fall from my horse had fortunately left no evil results; on the contrary it had changed my whole character for the better. From a lazy young man about town, I had become active, energetic, temperate, and above all—oh, above all else—ambitious.

There was only one thing which troubled me, I laughed at my own uneasiness, and yet it troubled me.

During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, The King in Yellow. I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace;

… by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked.

The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.

It was, I remember, the 13th day of April, 1920, that the first Government Lethal Chamber was established on the south side of Washington Square, between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue.

… joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet.

This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask.

I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.

some even are pillars of the most exclusive social temples; others are the prop and pride of the financial world; still others, hold undisputed sway among the ‘Fancy and the Talent.’ I choose them at my leisure from those who reply to my advertisements.

It is easy enough, they are all cowards.

I could treble the number in twenty days if I wished. So you see, those who have in their keeping the reputations of their fellow-citizens, I have in my pay.”

His face for a moment was awful to look upon. His eyes dwindled to a pair of green sparks.

“I invite them to come and have a little chat with me,” he said in a soft voice.

A knock at the door interrupted him, and his face resumed its amiable expression.

“You are speaking of the King in Yellow,” I groaned, with a shudder.

“He is a king whom emperors have served.”

“I am content to serve him,” I replied.

I saw he regretted his speech as soon as he had uttered it.

There is only one word which I loathe more than I do lunatic and that word is crazy.

But I controlled myself and asked him why he thought The King in Yellow dangerous.

“I understand he is still alive,” I answered.

“That’s probably true,” he muttered; “bullets couldn’t kill a fiend like that.”

“It is a book of great truths,” I said.

“Yes,” he replied, “of ‘truths’ which send men frantic and blast their lives.

I don’t care if the thing is, as they say, the very supreme essence of art. It’s a crime to have written it, and I for one shall never open its pages.

”

“You see,” he said, “it is without a flaw. What sculptor could reproduce it?”

The marble was white as snow, but in its depths the veins of the lily were tinged with palest azure, and a faint flush lingered deep in its heart.

“Don’t ask me the reason of that,” he smiled, noticing my wonder. “I have no idea why the veins and heart are tinted, but they always are. Yesterday I tried one of Geneviève’s goldfish—there it is.”

“Do you think I destroyed it?” said Boris gravely.

“Destroyed, preserved, how can we tell?”

We sat in the corner of a studio near his unfinished group of the Fates. He leaned back on the sofa, twirling a sculptor’s chisel and squinting at his work.

Geneviève was lovely. The Madonna-like purity of her face might have been inspired by the Sanctus in Gounod’s Mass. But I was always glad when she changed that mood for what we called her “April Manoeuvre.”

She was often as variable as an April day.

In the morning grave, dignified and sweet, at noon laughing, capricious, at evening whatever one least expected. I preferred her so rather than in that Madonna-like tranquillity which stirred the depths of my heart. I was dreaming of Geneviève when he spoke again.

Never in word or deed or thought while with them had I betrayed my sorrow even to myself.

The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me.

Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord.

The mask of self-deception was no longer a mask for me, it was a part of me.

Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and when the day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord.

These thoughts passed through my troubled mind as I lay sick, but they were hopelessly entangled with visions of white creatures, heavy as stone, crawling about in Boris’ basin—of the wolf’s head on the rug, foaming and snapping at Geneviève, who lay smiling beside it.

With a feeling of relief—with a deep, calm feeling of relief, I turned back to the mild face in the pulpit and settled myself to listen. Here, at last, was the ease of mind I longed for.

“My children,” said the preacher, “one truth the human soul finds hardest of all to learn: that it has nothing to fear. It can never be made to see that nothing can really harm it.”

“Curious doctrine!” I thought, “for a Catholic priest. Let us see how he will reconcile that with the Fathers.”

I sat and tried to collect my thoughts. My first sensation was like that of a very young child badly hurt, when it catches its breath before crying out.

To suddenly find myself the object of such hatred was exquisitely painful: and this man was an utter stranger.

Why should he hate me so?—me, whom he had never seen before? For the moment all other sensation was merged in this one pang: even fear was subordinate to grief, and for that moment I never doubted;

And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame.

Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!”

There are so many things which are impossible to explain!

Why should certain chords in music make me think of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage? Why should the Mass of Sainte Cécile bend my thoughts wandering among caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver?

“As true as my name is Tessie Reardon, I swear to you, Mr. Scott, that the face of the man below in the churchyard is the face of the man who drove the hearse!”

“What of it?” I said. “It’s an honest trade.”

“Then you think I did see the hearse?”

I am a Catholic. When I listen to high mass, when I sign myself, I feel that everything, including myself, is more cheerful, and when I confess, it does me good.

A man who lives as much alone as I do, must confess to somebody.

Then, again, Sylvia was Catholic, and it was reason enough for me. But I was speaking of Tessie, which is very different.

“Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

“Have you found the Yellow Sign?”

I was furious. What did he mean by that?

I had always refused to listen to any description of it, and indeed, nobody ever ventured to discuss the second part aloud, so I had absolutely no knowledge of what those leaves might reveal.

I stared at the poisonous mottled binding as I would at a snake.

“Don’t touch it, Tessie,” I said; “come down.”

“

The moor is wild and desolate. It is easy to enter, but sometimes they who enter never leave it.

There are no peasants’ huts here.”

She laughed very prettily and told me my dressage would perhaps be difficult, as I was noble.

“I am already tamed,” I replied; “jessed and belled.”

She laughed, delighted. “Oh, my brave falcon; then you will return at my call?”

“I am already tamed,” I replied; “jessed and belled.”

She laughed, delighted. “Oh, my brave falcon; then you will return at my call?”

“I am yours,” I answered gravely.

“Pray for the soul of the Demoiselle Jeanne D’Ys, who died in her youth for love of Philip, a Stranger. AD 1573.”

But upon the icy slab lay a woman’s glove still warm and fragrant.

Footsteps, a voice, and a song in the street below, and I knew the song but neither the steps nor the voice.

“Fool!” he cried, “the song is the same, the voice and steps have but changed with years!”

On the hearth a tongue of flame whispered above the whitening ashes: “Wait no more; they have passed, the steps and the voice in the street below.”

Then Truth stepped out, holding a mirror. “If he is an honest thief,” cried Truth, “Pierrot shall find him with this mirror!” but he only grinned, dusting the chalk from my black cloak.

“You see,” he said, “Truth is an honest thief, she brings you back your mirror.”

All eyes were turned on me.

“Who can compare with him in his white mask?” I asked of Death beside me.

“Who can compare with me?” said Death, “for I am paler still.”

“You are very beautiful,” sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from the mirror.

He rose from his easel smiling. She eyed him quietly, and when he walked toward her she watched him bend above her without a wince; her eyes followed his hand until it touched her head. Then she uttered a ragged mew.

It had long been Severn’s custom to converse with animals, probably because he lived so much alone

; and now he said, “What’s the matter, puss?”

He said she was very good and very beautiful. He has only seen her once, and does not know her name. I thanked him;—I don’t know why I thanked him so warmly. Cabane said, ‘

Into this cursed Street of the Four Winds, the four winds blow all things evil.

’ The sculptor looked confused, but when he went out with his rolls, he said to me, ‘I am sure, Monsieur, that she is as good as she is beautiful.’ ”

“The name of Elven has a charm for me. It tells me of meadows and clear rivers.

The name of Sylvia troubles me like perfume from dead flowers.

”

The air was heavy, weighted with the black cold as with a pall. To breathe was painful, to move an effort.

In the desolate sky there was something that wearied, in the brooding clouds, something that saddened.

It penetrated the freezing city cut by the freezing river, the splendid city with its towers and domes, its quays and bridges and its thousand spires.

Oh, yes, of course I know you will reimburse me, but that isn’t the question; and, anyway, it’s the opinion of your friends, old man, that you will not be worse off for a little abstinence from fleshly pleasures.

You are positively a freak in this famine-cursed city of skeletons!

”

“Tiens, c’est toi?” said the gamin tranquilly.

The impudence, the overpowering audacity of the ragamuffin took Trent’s breath away.

“Do you know, you young strangler,” he gasped, “that they shoot thieves of your age?”

A sudden fog had settled in the streets; the arches of the Arc were choked with it. He would go home. A great horror of being alone seized him. But he was not alone.

The fog was peopled with phantoms.

All around him in the mist they moved, drifting through the arches in lengthening lines, and vanished, while from the fog others rose up, swept past and were engulfed.

An icy wind swept down from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds.

For an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the naked woods of Vincennes, sank like a blood-clot in the battery smoke, lower, lower, into the blood-soaked plain.

When midnight sounded from the belfry of St. Sulpice the gates of Paris were still choked with fragments of what had once been an army.

… regiment marching with a desperate attempt at order, there a riotous mob of Mobiles crushing their way to the streets, then a turmoil of horsemen, cannon, troops without officers, officers without men, then again a line of ambulances, the wheels groaning under their heavy loads.

Dumb with misery the crowd looked on.

All through the day the ambulances had been arriving, and all day long the ragged throng whimpered and shivered by the barriers. At noon the crowd was increased tenfold, filling the squares about the gates, and swarming over the inner fortifications.

The street is not fashionable, neither is it shabby.

It is a pariah among streets—a street without a Quarter. It is generally understood to lie outside the pale of the aristocratic Avenue de l’Observatoire. The students of the Montparnasse Quarter consider it swell and will have none of it.

“They look like bad old men, Mr. Bladen,” said the girl.

To this Mr. Bladen smiled and said, “They’ve had their day,” in a tone which implied that he was now having his.

“And that’s why they all have baggy eyes,” cried the girl. “I think it’s a shame for young gentlemen—”

The sparrows were merry along the curbstones, taking bath after bath in the water and ruffling their feathers with delight. In a walled garden across the street a pair of blackbirds whistled among the almond trees.

Hastings swallowed the lump in his throat, for the song of the birds and the ripple of water in a Paris gutter brought back to him the sunny meadows of Millbrook.

“That’s a blackbird,” observed Miss Byng; “see him there on the bush with pink blossoms. He’s all black except his bill, and that looks as if it had been dipped in an omelet, as some Frenchman says—”

Hastings turned to look up at the winged god under whose shadow they were seated.

“Why, it’s Love,” he said.

“There is a nouveau here,” drawled Laffat, leaning around his easel and addressing his friend Bowles, “there is a nouveau here who is so tender and green and appetizing that Heaven help him if he should fall into a salad bowl.”

Clifford said goodnight with as pleasant a smile as he could muster, and then sat down with his eyes on the door. He took out his watch and gave Elliott ten minutes to vanish, then rang the concierge’s call, murmuring, “

Oh dear, oh dear, why the devil do I do it?

”

“Wings,” she murmured, “oh, yes—to fly away with when he’s tired of his play.

Of course it was a man who conceived the idea of wings, otherwise Cupid would have been insupportable.

”

“

Oh, yes, you are funnier than the Eldorado.

”

“I like you. You know that. Everybody does.

You are a spoiled child here. Everything is permitted you and everyone makes allowance, but everyone cannot be a victim to caprice.

”

Under the sycamores which surrounded the duck-pond opposite the fountain of Marie de Medici, the waterfowl cropped the herbage, or waddled in rows down the bank to embark on some solemn aimless cruise.

Butterflies, somewhat lame from a chilly night’s repose under the lilac leaves, crawled over and over the white phlox, or took a rheumatic flight toward some sun-warmed shrub.

The bees were already busy among the heliotrope, and one or two grey flies with brick-coloured eyes sat in a spot of sunlight beside the marble seat, or chased each other about, only to return again to the spot of sunshine and rub their forelegs, …

Trembling with happiness, she sighed: “

Is this the world? Then I have never known it.

”

“Nor have I, God forgive me,” he murmured.

Perhaps it was our gentle Lady of the Fields who forgave them both.

Elliott and Rowden, boiling with indignation, cried out, “And you!”

“I,” said Clifford blandly, “do fear to tread where you rush in.”

Twenty-four hours later Selby had completely forgotten Rue Barrée.

Shoddy butterflies flaunted their winter rags among the heliotrope. There was a smell of fresh earth in the air, an echo of the woodland brook in the ripple of the Seine, and swallows soared and skimmed among the anchored river craft.

Somewhere in a window a caged bird was singing its heart out to the sky.

Selby looked at the cabbage-rose and then at the sky. Something in the song of the caged bird may have moved him, or perhaps it was that dangerous sweetness in the air of May.

The white-spiked chestnuts clad in tender green vibrated with the hum of bees.

Shoddy butterflies flaunted their winter rags among the heliotrope.

There was a smell of fresh earth in the air, an echo of the woodland brook in the ripple of the Seine, and swallows soared and skimmed among the anchored river craft.

Selby looked at the cabbage-rose and then at the sky. Something in the song of the caged bird may have moved him, or perhaps it was that dangerous sweetness in the air of May.

At first he was hardly conscious that he had stopped, then he was scarcely conscious why he had stopped, then he thought he would move on, then he thought he wouldn’t, then he looked at Rue Barrée.

The gardener said, “Mademoiselle, this is undoubtedly a fine pot of pansies.”

… in the way refracting the light like a diamond, but as it rolled into a little corner by her nose a vision of Selby replaced it, and when a brush of the handkerchief had cleared the startled blue eyes, Selby himself appeared, very much embarrassed.

He instantly looked up into the sky, apparently devoured with a thirst for astronomical research, and as he continued his investigations for fully five minutes, the gardener looked up too, and so did a policeman.

Then Selby looked at the tips of his boots, the gardener looked at him and the policeman slouched on. Rue Barrée had been gone some time.

It was a confession and at the same time a supplication. Clifford jumped up, threaded his way through the floral labyrinth, and putting an eye to the crack of the door, said, “Who the devil is it?”

This graceful style of reception is indigenous to the Quarter.

“It’s Elliott,” he said, looking back, “and Rowden too, and their bulldogs.” Then he addressed them through the crack.

“Sit down on the stairs; Selby and I are coming out directly.”

Discretion is a virtue. The Latin Quarter possesses few, and discretion seldom figures on the list.

They sat down and began to whistle.