Page "Joris-Karl Huysmans" Paragraph 5

For thirty-two years, Huysmans worked as a civil servant for the French Ministry of the Interior, a job he found tedious.

The young Huysmans was called up to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, but was invalided out with dysentery.

He used this experience in an early story, " Sac au dos " ( Backpack ) ( later included in his collection, Les Soirées de Médan ).