While these preparations were going on Platzoff had not been silent.  “I have spoken to you of what I am about to smoke, both as opium and drashkil,” he said.  “It is not by any means pure opium.  With that great drug are mixed two or three others that modify and influence the chief ingredient materially.  I had the secret of the preparation from a Hindoo gentleman while I was in India.  It was imparted to me as an immense favour, it being a secret even there.  The enthusiastic terms in which he spoke of it have been fully justified by the result, as you would discover for yourself if you could only be persuaded to try it.  You shake your head.  Eh bien! mon ami; the loss is yours, not mine.”

“Some of what you have termed your ‘experiences’ are no doubt very singular ones?” said Ducie, interrogatively.

“They are—­very singular,” answered Platzoff.  “In my last drashkil-dream, for instance, I believed myself to be an Indian fakir, and I seemed to realise to the full the strange life of one of those strange beings.  I was stationed in the shade of a large tree just without the gate of some great city where all who came and went could see me.  On the ground, a little way in front of me, was a wooden bowl for the reception of the offerings of the charitable.  I had kept both my hands close shut for so many years that the nails had grown into the flesh, and the muscles had hardened so that I could no longer open them; and I was looked upon as a very holy man.  The words of the passers-by were sweet in my ears, but I never spoke to them in return.  Silent and immovable, I stood there through the livelong day—­and in my vision it was always day.  I had the power of looking back, and I knew that, in the first instance, I had been led by religious enthusiasm to adopt that mode of life.  I should be in the world but not of it; I should have more time for that introspective contemplation the aim and end of which is mental absorption in the divine Brahma; besides which, people would praise me, and all the world would know that I was a holy man.  But the strangest part of the affair remains to be told.  In the eyes of the people I had grown in sanctity from year to year; but in my own heart I knew that instead of approaching nearer to Brahma, I was becoming more depraved, more wicked, with a great inward wickedness, as time went on.  I struggled desperately against the slough of sin that was slowly creeping over me, but in vain.  It seemed to me as if the choice were given me either to renounce my life of outward-seeming sanctity, and becoming as other men were, to feel again that inward peace which had been mine long years before; or else, while remaining holy in the eyes of the multitude, to feel myself sinking into a bottomless pit of wickedness from which I could never more hope to emerge.  My mental tortures while this struggle was going on I can never forget:  they are as much a real experience to me as if they had made up a part of my genuine