We
both smoked opium. We knew each other's secret, and respected it. We
enjoyed together that wonderful expansion of thought, that marvelous
intensifying of the perceptive faculties, that boundless feeling of
existence when we seem to have points of contact with the whole
universe,--in short, that unimaginable spiritual bliss, which I would
not surrender for a throne, and which I hope you, reader, will
never--never taste.

Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor and I spent together in
secret were regulated with a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly
smoke the drug of paradise, and leave our dreams to chance. While
smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest and
calmest channels of thought. We talked of the East, and endeavored to
recall the magical panorama of its glowing scenery. We criticized the
most sensuous poets,--those who painted life ruddy with health, brimming
with passion, happy in the possession of youth and strength and beauty.
If we talked of Shakespeare's _Tempest_, we lingered over Ariel, and
avoided Caliban. Like the Guebers, we turned our faces to the East, and
saw only the sunny side of the world.

This skillful coloring of our train of thought produced in our
subsequent visions a corresponding tone. The splendors of Arabian
fairyland dyed our dreams. We paced the narrow strip of grass with the
tread and port of kings. The song of the _rana arborea_, while he clung
to the bark of the ragged plum-tree, sounded like the strains of divine
musicians. Houses, walls, and streets melted like rain clouds, and
vistas of unimaginable glory stretched away before us. It was a
rapturous companionship. We enjoyed the vast delight more perfectly
because, even in our most ecstatic moments, we were conscious of each
other's presence. Our pleasures, while individual, were still twin,
vibrating and moving in musical accord.

On the evening in question, the tenth of July, the Doctor and myself
drifted into an unusually metaphysical mood. We lit our large
meerschaums, filled with fine Turkish tobacco, in the core of which
burned a little black nut of opium, that, like the nut in the fairy
tale, held within its narrow limits wonders beyond the reach of kings;
we paced to and fro, conversing. A strange perversity dominated the
currents of our thought. They would _not_ flow through the sun-lit
channels into which we strove to divert them. For some unaccountable
reason, they constantl