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Lorrain first used ether medicinally, as symptomatic relief for his chronic tuberculosis — similar to his rival Maupassant, who once challenged him to a duel for plagiarism. His illness, and his self-medication with ether, were both woven into his highly cultivated public persona. A close confidant of Joris-Karl Huysmans, whose À Rebours () established itself as the decadents’ bible, Lorrain’s writing career straddled the worlds of tall aestheticism, well-paid journalism, commercial pulp sensation, and unprintable perversion. Like Huysmans’ masterpiece, many of his stories are not so much narratives as vignettes, mood pieces, or studies of mental states, unfolding in interior monologues that expect the modernists’ stream of consciousness. À Rebours includes a lengthy digression on scent, and the transports and associations that can be summoned by it; ether in the writing of Maupassant and particularly Lorrain can be seen as an outgrowth of this obsession amplified to madness. In the salons and cafés, it was often said that you could smell Lorrain’s presence in the room before