There is laughter at the Palais-Royal, for “comedy is one of the clearest satanic signs in man,” unquestionable evidence of original sin.⁷⁰⁹ The mark of the Orléans family, a compulsive scorn for everything, is impressed even on the perfect symmetry of their palace. But its garden is also the retreat for the Old Man of the Mountain, at the point where civilization is most “turbulent, excessive, mephitic.”⁷¹⁰ As he walks the streets of Paris, Baudelaire imagines Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Virginie, for whom Napoleon still felt moved during his last days on Saint Helena—while he was emperor, he had told Bernardin: “You should give us a Paul et Virginie every six months.” She who “is the perfect symbol of absolute purity and innocence” seemed, thought Baudelaire, “still wholly imbued with sea mist and gilded by the tropical sun, with eyes full of great primitive images of the waves, of the mountains, and of the forests.”⁷¹¹ She, too, heads on toward the Palais-Royal. And there, “by chance, innocently,” Virginie sees on display in a window a “caricature full of gall and rancor, as only a bored and perspicacious civilization can produce.”⁷¹² An image of the lovers of the hated Autrichienne, perhaps? Or a lascivious scene in the Parc aux Cerfs? Virginie realizes she is gazing into the unknown: “this impression will leave her with a strange uneasiness, something that resembles fear.”⁷¹³ While we are observing Virginie who is observing the caricature at the Palais-Royal, we hear Baudelaire’s quiet laughter nearby. “For the phenomena engendered by the fall will become the means for rescue,” he adds.⁷¹⁴

The West dreamed of being encyclopedia and brothel, theater stage and museum, Eden, polytechnic, harem: that dream was realized at the Palais-Royal. But it was a dream that was afraid of itself. It remains with us, suspended.