The treacherous Sainte-Beuve advised Baudelaire (in December 1861) to write a formal letter presenting himself as a candidate for the Académie. It had to be addressed to the Secrétaire Perpétuel de l’Académie Française, who at that time was Abel Villemain, the man whom Baudelaire regarded, more than anyone else, as the natural embodiment of Stupidity—(“I have a passion for Stupidity”).⁵⁷³ The letter was written with much agitation and innuendo (“To be entirely honest, the main reason that leads me to solicit your votes at this very moment is that, if I decided to solicit them only when I felt myself worthy, I would never solicit them”—we note “the grammatical dance” in using solicit three times in four lines).^{574, 575} When Baudelaire dutifully visited Alfred de Vigny, who was one of the forty academicians, Vigny shook his large noble head. It was a faux pas, unpardonable, he said. Too often he’d heard it whispered: “We’ll make that one bow and scrape, and in the end we shall not elect him.”⁵⁷⁶ And meanwhile he made a mental note: “It seems Baudelaire exists in literature only as a translator of this philosophical novelist [Poe].⁵⁷⁷ Distinguished and suffering appearance of a studious and hardworking man.” But he still had to visit the enormous Villemain, “enormis loquacitas,” “the hatred of a mediocre man is always an immense hatred.”⁵⁷⁸ Baudelaire listened as Villemain lectured him “with indescribable solemnity” about Les Paradis artificiels: “Toxicology, Monsieur, is not Morality!” Baudelaire records the phrase in masterly style, introducing two sarcastic capital letters.⁵⁷⁹ Ever childish, Baudelaire notes to himself: “I’ll make him pay dearly for it.”⁵⁸⁰ They said good-bye as follows: “M. Villemain, with insistence: I’ve never had any originality myself, Monsieur.⁵⁸¹ M. Baudelaire, ingratiating: Monsieur, how would you know?”

Uno Harva (Holmberg)⁵⁸²

The act of pouring milk or sprinkling fermented horse milk over the back of the sacrificial animal recalls the custom practiced in the Volga region where it is established whether the sacrifice is appreciated by pouring water over the victim. The shudder of the animal indicates a positive response. This at least is what the Yellow Uighurs recount: they pour “white water” (ak su), namely water mixed with milk, over the back of the sacrificial lamb and the quiver that it causes is seen as evidence that the sacrifice is acceptable to the god. What is more, a word in the Mongol language, borrowed from Chinese, which describes the act of pouring acquavit or water into the ears of a sacrificial pig, shows us that a corresponding custom is also known here.

Karl Meuli⁵⁸³

Σείoυ σὺ ταχέως, “shake yourself immediately!” cries Aristophanes’s Trygaeus to his sacrificial lamb: by shaking its head it has to give its consent. The Delphic god had quite clearly told Episcopus: only a sheep that spontaneously agrees can be a proper sacrifice. In the time of Plutarch this rule was still scrupulously followed, and Daphnis, for example, pours milk and wine over the head of his sacrificial animals, as was done to obtain the necessary gesture of consent. Water could also be put into the ear. For a sacrifice at Delphi it was not enough for the animal to shake its head: the animal had to shudder in order for Pythia to pronounce the oracle.