my dreams, my waking attempts to visualize her provide nothing but the image”…
“Of a serpent,” concluded Sir Brian, smiling pathetically. “You are indeed an enthusiast, M. Gaston, and to me a new type. I had supposed that every slave of the drug cursed his servitude and loathed and despised himself.”…
“Ah, monsieur! to me those words sound almost like a sacrilege!”
“But,” continued Sir Brian, “your remarks interest me strangely; for two reasons. First, they confirm your assertion that you are, or were, an habitué of the Rue St. Claude, and secondly, they revive in my mind an old fancy—a superstition.”
“What is that, Sir Brian?” inquired M. Max, whose opium vision was a faithful imitation of one related to him by an actual frequenter of the establishment near the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
“Only once before, M. Gaston, have I compared notes with a fellow opium-smoker, and he, also, was a patron of Madame Jean; he, also, met in his dreams that Eastern Circe, in the grove of apes, just as I”…
“Morbleu! Yes?”
“As I meet her!”
“But this is astounding!” cried Max, who actually thought it so. “Your fancy—your superstition—was this: that only habitués of Rue St. Claude met, in poppyland, this vision? And in your fancy you are now confirmed?”
