In chapter IX of En rade (translated as Becalmed, A Haven, or Stranded), an article recounting the discovery of ptomaines, scented molecules originating in the putrefaction of bodies, sends Jacques Marles dreaming of a time when their industrial extraction would renew our relationship to the dead. Loans lead us to believe that the source of this vision is in a book published in 1886 by the chemist Armand Gautier. In this research census, Huysmans found matter to nourish a visionary critique of technological science. Beyond the farcical science, it shows how scientific methods, linked to a conception of life detached from its finality, leads to a loss of essential values and the awakening of destructive archaic impulses. But the point of Gautier’s game with cadavres exquis – whose meaning is also exquisite corpses – is also literary; echoing Baudelaire’s poetry, they anticipate, between science and literature, the "objective poetry" or Rimbaud and the surrealists.