Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/133



once,—and forever. It is a detestable habit,—a horrible craze of the Parisians, who are positively deteriorating in blood and brain by reason of their passion for this poison. What the next generation will be, I dread to think! I know it is a difficult business to break off anything to which the system has grown accustomed,—but you are still a young man, and you cannot be too strongly warned against the danger of continuing in your present course of life. Moral force is necessary,—and you must exert it. I have a large medical practice, and cases like yours are alarmingly common, and as much on the increase as morphinomania amongst women; but I tell you frankly, no medicine can do good where the patient refuses to employ his own power of resistance. I must ask you, therefore, for your own sake, to bring all your will to bear on the effort to overcome this fatal habit of yours, as a matter of duty and conscience."

But the physician's admonition falls on heedless ears. Beauvais returns to the alluring glass, and the book ends with the confession that he is a confirmed absintheur—"a thing more abject than the lowest beggar that crawls through Paris whining for a sou!—a slinking, shuffling beast, half monkey, half man, whose aspect is so vile, whose body is so shaken with delirium, whose eyes are so murderous, that if you met me by chance in the daytime, you would probably shriek for sheer alarm!"

Such is the graphic and terrible picture drawn by Marie Corelli of the effects of this iniquitous draught. If Beauvais had not been tempted by