Masks and Madness: Villiers's `Le Convive des dernières fêtes'

"Le Convive des dernières fêtes" is not a "macabre anecdote," but a tale whose self-conscious structure subverts standard realist techniques of the short story to "Faire penser." Its artifice refuses the illusion of reality; a series of regressive analepses reveal the guest's identity, but fail to explain his madness: cultural allusions and recurrent motifs (masks, heat/cold, folie) set up relationships between characters. These point to a general complicity in the baron's monomania to a questioning of the standards of civilization. We all wear masks: fous are present unnoticed at our sides every day; aberrant instincts are inexplicable.