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The major is the composer of the popular opera "Haschisch," and has inherited his musical talents from his mother, a Hamburger by birth. His father is a dignitary of the Court of Baden, while his wife, a most charming woman, was, prior to her marriage, a Fraulein von Puttkamer, a member, therefore, of the same family as the late Princess Bismarck.
But it must have been very bad haschisch, for it made me sick, and so I was saved." "What made you send for me so urgently? The dog's tail you knew I had to come." "Sypher wanted you to give him some new gods." "He could have sent for me himself. Why did he ask you?" "He didn't," cried Septimus. "He doesn't know anything about it. He hasn't the faintest idea that you're in London to-night.
To sit in a room like the one I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every now and then, its faint silvery tune of forgotten days, filled the room; to do this is a special kind of voluptuousness, peculiar and complex and indescribable, like the half-drunkenness of opium or haschisch, and which, to be conveyed to others in any sense as I feel it, would require a genius, subtle and heady, like that of Baudelaire.
I regret to record the fact that the holy man was drunk, whether upon haschisch or the strong waters of the infidel, I know not, and to all outward seeming his holiness alone sufficed to keep him on the back of the spirited horse he bestrode. He went very near to upsetting a store of fresh vegetables belonging to a True Believer, and then nearly crushed an old man against the wall.
No fermented liquors form part of the Martial diet; but some narcotics resembling haschisch and opium are much relished. When the official had retired, I said to my host
He ceased; the wind howled furiously outside, flinging gusty dashes of rain against the one window of the room, a tall arched casement that clattered noisily with every blow inflicted upon it by the storm. Heliobas gave him a swift, searching glance, half pitying, half disdainful. "Haschisch or opium should serve your turn," he said curtly.
Certainly no sense of shame, or duty, or even compassion, ever moved the Maalem. By night he would repair to the kitchen tent and smoke kief or eat haschisch, but the troubles of preparing beds and supper did not worry him. "Until the feast is prepared, why summon the guest," he said on a night when the worthy M'Barak, opening his lips for once, remonstrated with him.
But their opiates affect a race addicted to physical repose, to sensuous enjoyment rather than to sensual excitement, and to lucid intellectual contemplation, with a sense of serene delight as supremely delicious to their temperament as the dreamy illusions of haschisch to the Turk, the fierce frenzy of bhang to the Malay, or the wild excitement of brandy or Geneva to the races of Northern Europe.
To sit in a room like the one I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every now and then, its faint silvery tune of forgotten days, filled the room; to do this is a special kind of voluptuousness, peculiar and complex and indescribable, like the half-drunkenness of opium or haschisch, and which, to be conveyed to others in any sense as I feel it, would require a genius, subtle and heady, like that of Baudelaire.
The enchantment which held me spell-bound, intoxicated my mind like fumes of haschisch, and I could hardly recognise myself in this fairy-world character; it required an effort on my part to assure myself of my own identity, and that I was not misled by a dream. No, it was myself sure enough! Then I remembered that I was going to see them again. My darlings were waiting for me.
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