Vedere Napokt e poi—pro patrid—mort 103
We had neither the need to get rid of any depression,
nor that to increase our already infinite intoxication; our-
selves and our love and the boundless beauty of the ever
changing landscape, a permanent perfection travelling
for its pleasure through inexhaustible possibilities!
Yet almost before the words were out of our mouths,
a sly smile crept over Lou’s loveliness and kindled the
same subtly secret delight in my heart.
_ She offered me a pinch of heroin with the air of
communicating some exquisitely esoteric sacrament;
and I accepted it and measured her a similar dose on
my own hand as if some dim delirious desire devoured
us. We took it not because we needed it ; but because
the act of consummation was, so to speak, an act of
religion.
It was the very fact that it was not an act of necessity
which made it an act of piety.
In the same way, I cannot say that the dose did us
any particular good. It was at once a routine and a
ritual. It was a commemoration like the Protestant
communion, and at the same time a consecration like
the Catholic. It reminded us that we Were heirs to the
royal rapture in which we were afloat. But also it
refreshed that rapture.
We noticed that in spite of the Alpine air, we did
not seem to have any great. appetite for breakfast,
and we appreciated with the instantaneous sympathy
which united us that the food of mortals was too
gross for the gods.
That sympathy was so strong and so subtle, so
fixed in our hearts, that we could not realise the rude,
raw fact that we had ever existed as separate beings.
The past was blotted out in the calm contemplation
of our beatitude. We understood the changeless ecstasy
that radiates from statues of the Buddha ; the mysteri-
ous triumph on the mouth of Monna Lisa, and the
unearthly and ineffable glee of the attitude of Haidée
oureux.
We smoked in shining silence as the express swept
D.D.F, H