as clearly as
possible. But the thing is not easy, so facile, so delicate, so almost
imperceptible, are these sensations.

"It was when I was attacked by violent neuralgia that I made use of this
remedy, which since then I have, perhaps, slightly abused.

"I had acute pains in my head and neck, and an intolerable heat of the
skin, a feverish restlessness. I took up a large bottle of ether, and,
lying down, I began to inhale it slowly.

"At the end of some minutes I thought I heard a vague murmur, which ere
long became a sort of humming, and it seemed to me that all the interior
of my body had become light, light as air, that it was dissolving into
vapor.

"Then came a sort of torpor, a sleepy sensation of comfort, in spite of
the pains which still continued, but which had ceased to make themselves
felt. It was one of those sensations which we are willing to endure
and not any of those frightful wrenches against which our tortured body
protests.

"Soon the strange and delightful sense of emptiness which I felt in my
chest extended to my limbs, which, in their turn, became light, as light
as if the flesh and the bones had been melted and the skin only were
left, the skin necessary to enable me to realize the sweetness of
living, of bathing in this sensation of well-being. Then I perceived
that I was no longer suffering. The pain had gone, melted away,
evaporated. And I heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without
understanding what was said. At one time there were only indistinct
sounds, at another time a word reached my ear. But I recognized that
this was only the humming I had heard before, but emphasized. I was not
asleep; I was not awake; I comprehended, I felt, I reasoned with the
utmost clearness and depth, with extraordinary energy and intellectual
pleasure, with a singular intoxication arising from this separation of
my mental faculties.

"It was not like the dreams caused by hasheesh or the somewhat sickly
visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of reasoning,
a new way of seeing, judging and appreciating the things of life, and
with the certainty, the absolute consciousness that this was the true
way.

"And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind. It
seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the
mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a
new, strange and irrefutable logic. And arguments, reasonings, proofs