would need all the diplomacy he possessed.  Bad as he was, he had no experience of practical blackmailing, and he would be obliged to compose his speeches beforehand with scrupulous care, and with the wisest forethought.  For the present, such work was beyond his power, but when he was half drunk he loved to look at the ancient parchments and build golden palaces in the future.  When he was strong again, and calm, he would realise all his dreams, and that time, he felt sure, could not be far removed.

Nevertheless the days succeeded each other with appalling swiftness, and nothing was done.  By imperceptible degrees his horror of San Giacinto began to invade his mind even when it was most deadened by drink.  So long as an idea is new and has not really become a habit of the brain, brandy will drive it away, but the moment must inevitably come when the stimulant loses its power to obscure the memory of the thing dreaded.  Opium will do it more effectually, but even that does not continue to act for ever.  The time comes when the predominant thought of the waking hours reproduces itself during the artificial sleep with fearful force, so that the mind at last obtains no rest at all.  That is the dangerous period, preceding the decay and total collapse of the intellect under what is commonly called the fixed idea.  In certain conditions of mind, and notably with criminals who fear discovery, the effects of opium change very quickly; the downward steps through which it would take months for an ordinary individual to pass are descended with alarming rapidity, and the end is a thousand times more horrible.  Meschini could not have taken the doses which a confirmed opium-eater swallows with indifference, but the result produced was far greater in proportion to the amount of the narcotic he consumed.  Before the week which followed the deed was ended, he began to see visions when he was apparently awake.  Shapeless, slimy things crawled about the floor of his room, upon his table, even upon the sheets of his bed.  Dark shadows confronted him, and changed their outlines unexpectedly.  Forms rose out of the earth at his feet and towered all at once to the top of the room, taking the appearance of San Giacinto and vanishing suddenly into the air.  The things he saw came like instantaneous flashes from another and even more terrible world, disappearing at first so quickly as to make him believe them only the effects of the light and darkness, like the ghost he had seen in his coat.  In the beginning there was scarcely anything alarming in them, but as he started whenever they came, he generally took them as a warning that he needed more brandy to keep him up.  In the course of a day or two, however, these visions assumed more awful proportions, and he found it impossible to escape from them except in absolute stupor.  It would have been clear to any one that this state of things could not last long.  There was scarcely an hour in which he knew exactly what