Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/245

Rh "But you can sleep when you please, monsieur?" said Morrel.

"Yes."

"You have a receipt for it?"

"An infallible one."

"That would be invaluable to us in Africa, who have not always any food to eat, and rarely anything to drink."

"Yes," said Monte-Cristo; "but, unfortunately, a receipt excellent for a man like myself, who leads a quite exceptional life, would be very dangerous applied to an army, which might not awake when it was needed."

"May we inquire what is this receipt!" asked Debray.

"Oh, yes," returned Monte-Cristo; "I make no secret of it. It is a mixture of excellent opium, which I fetched myself from Canton in order to have it pure, and the best hashish which grows in the east that is, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. These two ingredients are mixed in equal proportions, and formed into pills, taken when required. Ten minutes after one is taken, the effect is produced. Ask M. le Baron Franz d'Epinay; I think he tasted them one day."

"Yes," replied Morcerf, "he said something about it to me, and retains a pleasing recollection thereof."

"But," said Beauchamp, who, in his capacity of journalist, was very incredulous, "you always carry this drug about you?"

"Always."

"Would it be an indiscretion to ask to see those precious pills?" continued Beauchamp, hoping to take him at a disadvantage.

"No, monsieur," returned the count; and he drew from his pocket a marvelous bonbonniere, formed out of a single emerald, and closed by a golden lid, which unscrewed and gave passage to a small ball of a greenish color, and about the size of a pea. This ball had an acrid and penetrating odor. There were four or five more in the emerald, which would contain about a dozen. The bonbonniere passed around the table, but it was more to examine the admirable emerald than to see the pills that it passed from hand to hand.

"And is it your cook who prepares these pills?" asked Beauchamp.

"Oh, no, monsieur," replied Monte-Cristo; "I do not thus intrust my enjoyments to vulgar hands. I am a tolerable chemist, and prepare my pills myself."

"This is a magnificent emerald, and the largest I have ever seen," said Chateau-Renaud, "although my mother has some remarkable family jewels."