I was most completely under their influence, I knew myself to be seated in
the tower of Antonio's hotel in Damascus, knew that I had taken hasheesh,
and that the strange, gorgeous and ludicrous fancies which possessed me,
were the effect of it. At the very same instant that I looked upon the
Valley of the Nile from the pyramid, slid over the Desert, or created my
marvellous wells in that beautiful pastoral country, I saw the furniture
of my room, its mosaic pavement, the quaint Saracenic niches in the walls,
the painted and gilded beams of the ceiling, and the couch in the recess
before me, with my two companions watching me. Both sensations were
simultaneous, and equally palpable. While I was most given up to the
magnificent delusion, I saw its cause and felt its absurdity most clearly.
Metaphysicians say that the mind is incapable of performing two operations
at the same time, and may attempt to explain this phenomenon by supposing
a rapid and incessant vibration of the perceptions between the two states.
This explanation, however, is not satisfactory to me; for not more clearly
does a skilful musician with the same breath blow two distinct musical
notes from a bugle, than I was conscious of two distinct conditions of
being in the same moment. Yet, singular as it may seem, neither conflicted
with the other. My enjoyment of the visions was complete and absolute,
undisturbed by the faintest doubt of their reality, while, in some other
chamber of my brain, Reason sat coolly watching them, and heaping the
liveliest ridicule on their fantastic features. One set of nerves was
thrilled with the bliss of the gods, while another was convulsed with
unquenchable laughter at that very bliss. My highest ecstacies could not
bear down and silence the weight of my ridicule, which, in its turn, was
powerless to prevent me from running into other and more gorgeous
absurdities. I was double, not "swan and shadow," but rather, Sphinx-like,
human and beast. A true Sphinx, I was a riddle and a mystery to myself.

The drug, which had been retarded in its operation on account of having