All present left the conversation to the Duke and Capraja, not wishing
to be the victims of mystification. Only Vendramin and the French
doctor listened to them for a few minutes. The opium-smoker understood
these poetic flights; he had the key of the palace where those two
sensuous imaginations were wandering. The doctor, too, tried to
understand, and he understood, for he was one of the Pleiades of
genius belonging to the Paris school of medicine, from which a true
physician comes out as much a metaphysician as an accomplished
analyst.

"Do you understand them?" said Emilio to Vendramin as they left the
cafe at two in the morning.

"Yes, my dear boy," said Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him.
"Those two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is
given here below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can
fly on the shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue
empyrean where the sublime marvels are wrought of the intellectual
life; they, by the power of art, can soar whither your immense love
carries you, whither opium transports me. Then none can understand
them but those who are like them.

"I, who can inspire my soul by such base means, who can pack a hundred
years of life into a single night, I can understand those lofty
spirits when they talk of that glorious land, deemed a realm of
chimeras by some who think themselves wise; but the realm of reality
to us whom they think mad. Well, the Duke and Capraja, who were
acquainted at Naples,--where Cataneo was born,--are mad about music."

"But what is that strange system that Capraja was eager to explain to