After you have partaken of your repast in the Chinese Restaurant, if you request it, tobacco pipes will be brought in, and your waiter will fill and light them for you and your friends.

You can even, with a certain degree of caution, indulge in the opium pipe, the joy of the Chinaman.

As you draw on this pipe and take long draughts you lapse into a strange state, all your ills seem to vanish, and you become indifferent to the world.

The beggar in imagination becomes a millionaire, and for the time he feels that he is in the midst of courtly splendours.

But, ah! When one awakes from his dream the pleasures are turned into ashes, and the glory fades as the fires of the pipe die.