ing nausea, the duration of which is prolonged. After the nausea has passed its course, a series of visions is vouchsafed the experimenter, these visions extending in a series, on various planes, to the mystic number of seven. Under the spell of these visions, the adepts vaticinate future events. I have wondered sometimes if it were not possible that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with the properties of these beans, that William Blake was under their influence when he drew his mystic plates.
Be that as it may, I swallowed one bean, which I had been informed would be sufficient to give me the desired effect, and without interval, I was carried at once on to the plane of the visions, which concentrated themselves into one gigantic phantasm. Have you ever seen Jacques Callot's copperplate engraving of The Temptation of Saint Anthony? The hideous collection of teratological monsters, half-insect, half-microbe, of gigantic size, exposed in that picture, swarmed about me, menacing me with their horrid beaks, their talons and claws, their evil antenne. Further cohorts of malignant monstrosities without bones lounged about the room and sprawled against my body, rubbing their flabby, slimy, oozing folds against my legs. After a few more stercoraceous manœuvres, some of which I should hesitate to describe, even to you, the monsters began to breathe forth liquid fire, and the pain resulting from the touch of these tongues of flame finally awoke me. I was violently ill, and my ill-
