When the Princess Chiaromonte was getting well, she asked some questions of her doctor, to which he replied as truthfully as he could.

She inquired, for instance, whether she had been delirious at the beginning, and whether she had talked much when her mind was wandering, and his answers disturbed her a little.

As sometimes happens in such cases, she had disjointed recollections of what she had said, and vague visions of herself that were not mere creations of her imagination.

It was like a dream that had not been quite a dream; opium-eaters know what the sensation is better than other men.

Under the influence of laudanum, or the pipe, or the hypodermic, they have talked brilliantly, but they cannot remember what the conversation was about; or else they know that they have been furiously angry, but cannot recall the cause of their wrath nor the person on whom it was vented; or they have betrayed a secret, but for their lives they could not say who it was to whom they told it.