possible to intelligent men, let us say even
very intelligent men, dangerous, like everything that overexcites our
organs, but exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain
preparation, that is to say, a practice, to feel in all their
completeness the singular effects of ether.

"They are different from the effects of haschich, from the effects of
opium and morphia, and they cease as soon as the absorption of the
drug is interrupted, while the other generators of day dreams continue
their action for hours.

"I am now going to try to analyze as clearly as possible the way one
feels. 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 perhaps I have since slightly abused.

"I had in my head and in my neck acute pains, and an intolerable heat
of the skin, a feverish restlessness. I took up a large flagon 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 of the soul, a somnolent sense of comfort
in spite of the pains which still continued, but which, however, 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 well-being. Then I perceived that I was no
longer suffering. The pain had gone, melted also, 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, accentuated. 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
fac