alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features
were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."

"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the
use of opium, or rather the abuse of it. I can only say, that the
substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition. The world has
now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth,
honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all
shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own
thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full
gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to
that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to
which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully
solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I
make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the
light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard
thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of
misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and
under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of
misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have
often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable
to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I
realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct
existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.

"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter
disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I
recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning
it. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation
to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I