it. Likewise, though I
also found the porte-crayon distasteful, I was able, as I laid it on my
table, to comfort myself with the thought that it was at least a SILVER
article--so much capital, as it were--and likely to be very useful to
a student. As for the smoking things, I decided to put them into use at
once, and try their capabilities.

Unsealing the four packages, and carefully filling the Stamboul pipe
with some fine-cut, reddish-yellow Turkish tobacco, I applied a hot
cinder to it, and, taking the mouthpiece between my first and second
fingers (a position of the hand which greatly caught my fancy), started
to inhale the smoke.

The smell of the tobacco seemed delightful, yet something burnt my mouth
and caught me by the breath. Nevertheless, I hardened my heart, and
continued to draw abundant fumes into my interior. Then I tried blowing
rings and retaining the smoke. Soon the room became filled with blue
vapours, while the pipe started to crackle and the tobacco to fly out
in sparks. Presently, also, I began to feel a smarting in my mouth and
a giddiness in my head. Accordingly, I was on the point of stopping and
going to look at myself and my pipe in the mirror, when, to my surprise,
I found myself staggering about. The room was whirling round and
round, and as I peered into the mirror (which I reached only with some
difficulty) I perceived that my face was as white as a sheet. Hardly had
I thrown myself down upon a sofa when such nausea and faintness swept
over me that, making up my mind that the pipe had proved my death, I
expected every moment to expire. Terribly frightened, I tried to call
out for some one to come and help me, and to send for the doctor.

However, this panic of mine did not last long, for I soon understood
what the matter with me was, and remained lying on the sofa with a
racking headache and my limbs relaxed as I stared dully at the stamp on
the package of tobacco, the Pipe-tube coiled on the floor, and the odds
and ends of tobacco and confectioner's tartlets which were littered
about. "Truly," I thought to myself in my dejection and disillusionment,
"I cannot be quite grown-up if I cannot smoke as other fellows do, and
should be fated never to hold a chibouk between my first and second
fingers, or to inhale and puff smoke through a flaxen moustache!"

When Dimitri called for me at five o'clock, he found me in this
unpleasant predicament. After drinking a glass of water, however, I fel