"All that you have explained to me," I said, "I understand perfectly.

But I own I am puzzled on one point, which you have not made clear to me

yet."

"What is the point?"

"I don't understand the effect of the laudanum on me. I don't understand

my walking down-stairs, and along corridors, and my opening and shutting

the drawers of a cabinet, and my going back again to my own room. All

these are active proceedings. I thought the influence of opium was first

to stupefy you, and then to send you to sleep."

"The common error about opium, Mr. Blake! I am, at this moment, exerting

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my intelligence (such as it is) in your service, under the influence

of a dose of laudanum, some ten times larger than the dose Mr. Candy

administered to you. But don't trust to my authority--even on a question

which comes within my own personal experience. I anticipated the

objection you have just made: and I have again provided myself with

independent testimony which will carry its due weight with it in your

own mind, and in the minds of your friends."

He handed me the second of the two books which he had by him on the

table.

"There," he said, "are the far-famed CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM

EATER! Take the book away with you, and read it. At the passage which

I have marked, you will find that when De Quincey had committed what he

calls 'a debauch of opium,' he either went to the gallery at the Opera

to enjoy the music, or he wandered about the London markets on Saturday

night, and interested himself in observing all the little shifts and

bargainings of the poor in providing their Sunday's dinner. So much for

the capacity of a man to occupy himself actively, and to move about from

place to place under the influence of opium."

"I am answered so far," I said; "but I am not answered yet as to the

effect produced by the opium on myself."

"I will try to answer you in a few words," said Ezra Jennings.

"The action of opium is comprised, in the majority of cases, in two

influences--a stimulating influence first, and a sedative influence

afterwards. Under the stimulating influence, the latest and most vivid

impressions left on your mind--namely, the impressions relating to the

Diamond--would be likely, in your morbidly sensitive nervous condition,

to become intensified in your brain, and would subordinate to themselves

your judgment and your will exactly as an ordinary dream subordinates to

itself your judgment and your will. Little by little, under this action,

any apprehensions about the safety of the Diamond which you might have

felt during the day would be liable to develop themselves from the

state of doubt to the state of certainty--would impel you into practical

action to preserve the jewel--would direct your steps, with that motive

in view, into the room which you entered--and would guide your hand to

the drawers of the cabinet, until you had found the drawer which held

the stone. In the spiritualised intoxication of opium, you would do

all that. Later, as the sedative action began to gain on the stimulant

action, you would slowly become inert and stupefied. Later still you

would fall into a deep sleep. When the morning came, and the effect of

the opium had been all slept off, you would wake as absolutely ignorant

of what you had done in the night as if you had been living at the

Antipodes. Have I made it tolerably clear to you so far?"




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