Des Esseintes is not feeling well and imagines a trip will do him good. He packs his cases (meticulously) first takes a coach then takes the train to Paris from where he'll have to take another train to Dieppe from where he can take a boat to cross the canal. The weather is awful. Rain is pouring down in endless torrents. He has to wait a couple of hours in Paris and decides to have a meal after which he goes straight back home and feels like a man who returns from a long and dangerous journey and has narrowly escaped death. For days on end he does nothing else then reorganise his library. He enjoys this with an extraordinary intensity knowing that in London he wouldn't have been able to do so. He returns to his life of picking exactly the right colour of wall covering for the rooms in his house and enjoying his private collection of books printed and bound exactly to his wishes.

Des Esseintes rather stayed at home. In spite of the fact that very likely I will make the trip to London and will even go to different places once I'm there, in this short residency 'I'd rather stay at home' I want to explore the mentality of Des Esseintes.