Explore "What Is Truth?" by Charles Pierre Baudelaire on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the / ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of / glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality.
But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died / soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon / a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I / myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as / uncorruptible as the coffers of India.
And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I / became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the / dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and / hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true / Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly / and blindness you shall love me as I truly am."
But I, furious, replied: "No! " The better to emphasise my refusal I / struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to / the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught / perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal.