“And the nights too,” assented the guest who sat next to him.  “I sleep very little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous.  Never do I come across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to any one, a violent longing to say nothing and to listen to nothing.  I don’t know what to do with my evenings.”

The third idler remarked: 

“I would pay a great deal for anything that would help me to pass just two pleasant hours every day.”

The writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm, turned round to them, and said: 

“The man who could discover a new vice and introduce it among his fellow creatures, even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a greater service to humanity than the man who found the means of securing to them eternal salvation and eternal youth.”

The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said: 

“Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it.  Men have however crudely, been seeking for—­and working for the object you refer to since the beginning of the world.  The men who came first reached perfection at once in this way.  We are hardly equal to them.”

One of the three idlers murmured: 

“What a pity!”

Then, after a minute’s pause, he added: 

“If we could only sleep, sleep well, without feeling hot or cold, sleep with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams.”

“Why without dreams?” asked the guest sitting next to him.

The other replied: 

“Because dreams are not always pleasant; they are always fantastic, improbable, disconnected; and because when we are asleep we cannot have the sort of dreams we like.  We ought to dream waking.”

“And what’s to prevent you?” asked the writer.

The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.

“My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake, you need great power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great weariness is the result.  Now, real dreaming, that journey of our thoughts through delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest experience in the world; but it must come naturally, it must not be provoked in a painful, manner, and must be accompanied by absolute bodily comfort.  This power of dreaming I can give you, provided you promise that you will not abuse it.”

The writer shrugged his shoulders: 

“Ah! yes, I know—­hasheesh, opium, green tea—­artificial paradises.  I have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug, which made me very sick.”

But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said: 

“No; ether, nothing but ether; and I would suggest that you literary men should use it sometimes.”

The three rich bachelors drew closer to the doctor.

One of them said: 

“Explain to us the effects of it.”