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It was the radiance of an opium-dream an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mold which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen.
I saw everything in the glory of an everlasting sunset, for every word I read, I heard in the tones of your voice; through the radiant consciousness of your present beauty, received every thought that awoke. If ever one being was possessed by another, I was that night possessed by you. In this mood, like that, I say again, of an opium-dream, I wrote the criticism of your book.
A writer like Arsène Houssaye will write his "King Voltaire" or his "Madame de Pompadour," or Capefigue his "Madame de la Vallière," in which the judgment seems to have been set aside, and historical facts accumulated in some opium-dream are strangely woven into a narrative representing reality, with about as much truth as Oriental arabesques, or the adornings of richly wrought tapestry.
It was the radiance of an opium-dream an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered vision about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen.
But there is another effect of her "black drop" which is not so commonly recognized. Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal. I am sure that the pictures painted by the imagination, the faded frescos on the walls of memory, come out in clearer and brighter colors than belonged to them many years earlier.
After this it changes, and with the exception of a few real incidents that aroused me from my trance, it floats before me in more than the voluptuous splendor of an opium-dream. The cause of this change is a curious chapter in mental philosophy. It was no doubt purely physical, resulting from want of sleep, fatigue, dampness, lack of food, and intense mental exertion. But let me narrate facts.
Everything around me was pervaded with rose-color and rose-odor, when, my head and heart, my imagination and senses, my memory and hope full of yourself, I sat down to read your poem. I was like one in an opium-dream.
But there is another effect of her "black drop" which is not so commonly recognized. Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal. I am sure that the pictures painted by the imagination, the faded frescos on the walls of memory, come out in clearer and brighter colors than belonged to them many years earlier.
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