STATESMAN.  Oh, I have nothing on my conscience as to that.  My housekeeper is a dragon.  Her fidelity is of the kind that will even risk dismissal.

DOCTOR.  An invaluable person, under the circumstances.

STATESMAN.  Yes; a nuisance, but indispensable.  No, Doctor.  This dream didn’t come from the stomach.  It seemed rather to emanate from that outer darkness which surrounds man’s destiny.  So real, so horribly real!

DOCTOR.  Better, then, not to brood on it.

STATESMAN.  Ah!  Could I explain it, then I might get rid of it.  In the ancient religion of my race dreams found their interpretation.  But have they any?

DOCTOR.  Medical science is beginning to say “Yes”; that in sleep the subconscious mind has its reactions.

STATESMAN.  Well, I wonder how my “subconscious mind” got hold of primroses.

DOCTOR.  Primroses?  Did they form a feature in your dream?

STATESMAN.  A feature?  No.  The whole place was alive with them!  As the victim of inebriety sees snakes, I saw primroses.  They were everywhere:  they fawned on me in wreaths and festoons; swarmed over me like parasites; flew at me like flies; till it seemed that the whole world had conspired to suffocate me under a sulphurous canopy of those detestable little atoms.  Can you imagine the horror of it, Doctor, to a sane—­a hitherto sane mind like mine?

DOCTOR.  Oh!  In a dream any figment may excite aversion.

STATESMAN.  This wasn’t like a dream.  It was rather the threat of some new disease, some brain malady about to descend on me:  possibly delirium tremens.  I have not been of abstemious habits, Doctor.  Suppose—?

DOCTOR.  Impossible!  Dismiss altogether that supposition from your mind!

STATESMAN.  Well, Doctor, I hope—­I hope you may be right.  For I assure you that the horror I then conceived for those pale botanical specimens in their pestiferous and increscent abundance, exceeded what words can describe.  I have felt spiritually devastated ever since, as though some vast calamity were about to fall not only on my own intellect, but on that of my country.  Well, you shall hear.

(He draws his trembling bands wearily over his face, and sits thinking awhile.)

With all the harsh abruptness of a soul launched into eternity by the jerk of the hangman’s rope, so I found myself precipitated into the midst of this dream.  I was standing on a pillory, set up in Parliament Square, facing the Abbey.  I could see the hands of St. Margaret’s clock pointing to half-past eleven; and away to the left the roof of Westminster Hall undergoing restoration.  Details, Doctor, which gave a curious reality to a scene otherwise fantastic, unbelievable.  There I stood in a pillory, raised up from earth; and a great crowd had gathered to look at me.  I can only describe it as a primrose crowd.  The disease infected all, but not so badly as it did me.  The yellow contagion spread everywhere; from all the streets around, the botanical deluge continued to flow in upon me.  I felt a pressure at my back; a man had placed a ladder against it; he mounted and hung a large wreath of primroses about my neck.  The sniggering crowd applauded the indignity.  Having placed a smaller wreath upon my head, he descended....  A mockery of a May Queen, there I stood!