He held it up to the light and read the label, "Absinthe."

"Ah," he exclaimed with evident interest, looking first at the
bottle and then at the wild, formless pictures. "Our crazy
Frenchman was an absintheur. I thought the pictures were rather
the product of a disordered mind than of genius."

He replaced the bottle, adding: "It is only recently that our own
government placed a ban on the importation of that stuff as a
result of the decision of the Department of Agriculture that it
was dangerous to health and conflicted with the pure food law. In
France they call it the 'scourge,' the 'plague,' the 'enemy,' the
'queen of poisons.' Compared with other alcoholic beverages it has
the greatest toxicity of all. There are laws against the stuff in
France, Switzerland, and Belgium. It isn't the alcohol alone,
although there is from fifty to eighty per cent. in it, that makes
it so deadly. It is the absinthe, the oil of wormwood, whose
bitterness has passed into a proverb. The active principle
absinthin is a narcotic poison. The stuff creates a habit most
insidious and difficult to break, a longing more exacting than
hunger. It is almost as fatal as cocaine in its blasting effects
on mind and body.

"Wormwood," he pursued, still rummaging about, "has a special
affinity for the brain-cells and the nervous system in general. It
produces a special affliction of the mind, which might be called
absinthism. Loss of will follows its use, brutishness, softening
of the brain. It gives rise to the wildest hallucinations. Perhaps
that was why our absintheur chose first to destroy or steal all