ghing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said:

"Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it. Men have however crudely,
been seeking for--and working for the object you refer to since the
beginning of the world. The men who came first reached perfection at once
in this way. We are hardly equal to them."

One of the three idlers murmured:

"What a pity!"

Then, after a minute's pause, he added:

"If we could only sleep, sleep well, without feeling hot or cold, sleep
with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are
thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams."

"Why without dreams?" asked the guest sitting next to him.

The other replied:

"Because dreams are not always pleasant; they are always fantastic,
improbable, disconnected; and because when we are asleep we cannot have
the sort of dreams we like. We ought to dream waking."

"And what's to prevent you?" asked the writer.

The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.

"My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake, you need great
power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great
weariness is the result. Now, real dreaming, that journey of our thoughts
through delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest experience in the
world; but it must come naturally, it must not be provoked in a painful,
manner, and must be accompanied by absolute bodily comfort. This power of
dreaming I can give you, provided you promise that you will not abuse
it."

The writer shrugged his shoulders:

"Ah! yes, I know--hasheesh, opium, green tea--artificial
paradises. I have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug,
which made me very sick."

But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said:

"No; ether, nothing but ether; and I would suggest that you literary men
should use it sometimes."

The three rich bachelors drew closer to the doctor.

One of them said:

"Explain to us the effects of it."

And the doctor replied:

"Let us put aside big words, shall we not? I am not talking of medicine
or morality; I am talking of pleasure. You give yourselves up every day
to excesses which consume your lives. I want to indicate to you a new
sensation, possible only to intelligent men--let us say even very
intelligent men--dangerous, like everything else that overexcites
our organs, but exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain
preparation, that is to say, practice, to feel in all their completeness
the sing