306 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
it, in its turn, becomes a measure of the grandeur of
the rock.
We walked up from the station to the residence of
King Lamus, high on the hillside above the neck of
Jand which joins it to the rock. The cliffs towered
above us. They were torn into huge pinnacles and
gullies ; but above the terrific precipices we could see
the remains of successive civilisations ; Greek temples,
Roman walls, Saracen cisterns, Norman gateways,
and houses of all periods were perishing slowly on the
gaunt, parched crags.
It was very hard work for Lou and myself to climb
the hill in the wretched condition of our health. We
had to sit down repeatedly on the huge boulders which
lined the paths that wound among the well-tilled fields
dotted with gnarled gray olives.
- The air of the place was a sublime intoxication,
and yet its enchantment merely rubbed into our souls
the shame of our wretched physical condition. We
had to take several goes of heroin on the way. We
didn’t see why we couldn’t have had a carriage part
of the way. But it was part of King Lamus’s plan,
no doubt, that we should be stung with the realisation
of our impotence in so divine a spot, where every voice
of nature swelled the chorus that spurred us to physical
activity. Our invalidism had not seemed so horribly
unnatural in London as it did in this consecrated
temple of beauty.
Lamus himself seemed invigorated to an extraordinary
degree by his home-coming. He gambolled like a
young goat while we plodded gaspingly up the slope.
And while we rested he told us the history of the monu-
ments that crumbled on the crags.
“ This place will help you to correct your ideas,” he
said, “‘of what is permanent, so far as anything is
permanent.”
We were indeed filled with a feeling of the futility
of human effort as we contemplated the layers of
civilisations, and looked down upon that last of them