"So you're going to be a poet, Mr. Mesurier," he said. "Well, so was I
once, so was I--but," he continued, "all too early another Muse took
hold of me, a terrible Muse--yet a Muse who never forsakes you--" and
he laid his hand on a decanter which stood near him on the table,--"yes,
Mr. Mesurier, the terrible Muse of Drink! You may be surprised to hear
me talk so; yet were this laudanum instead of brandy, there would seem
to you a certain element of the poetic in the service of such a Muse.
Drinks with Oriental or unfamiliar names have a romantic sound. Thus
Alfred de Musset as the slave to absinthe sounds much more poetic than,
say, Alfred de Musset as a slave to rum or gin, or even this brandy
here. Yet this, too, is no less the stuff that dreams are made of; and
the opium-eater, the absinthe-sipper, the brandy-drinker, are all
members of the same great brotherhood of tragic idealists--"

He talked deliberately; but there was a smile playing at the corners of
the mouth which took from his talk the sense of a painful
self-revelation, and gave it the air of a playful fantasia upon a
paradox that for the moment amused him.

"Idealists! Yes," he continued; "for what few understand is that drink
is an idealism--and," he presently added with a laugh, "and, of course,
like all idealisms, it has its dangers."

With a monomaniac, conversation is apt to limit itself to monologue;
so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him but
little to say.

"I'm afraid I shock you a little, Mr. Mesurier, perhaps even--disgust
you," said Mr. Gerard.