SMOKERS' STORIES. 75 



well-seasoned cigar, letting your thoughts 

 ascend as uncertain and vaporous as the 

 smoke floating around you, let me tell 

 you, I repeat, that if you have never yet 

 enjoyed the situation, you still have to 

 be initiated into one of the sweetest of 

 our terrestrial joys. Casanovia, the im- 

 modest Venetian who wrote his own 

 memoirs, so that no one should be able 

 to discover any eccentricities he had not 

 committed, pretends that the smoker's 

 sole pleasure consists in seeing the smoke 

 escape from his lips. I think, O 

 Venetian ! that you have touched a false 

 note here. The smoke of the cigar pro- 

 duces the same effect as opium, in that 

 it leads to a state of febrile exaltation, a 

 perennial source of new pleasures. The 

 cigar deadens sorrow, distracts our en- 

 forced inactivity, renders idleness sweet 

 and easy to us, and peoples our solitude 

 with a thousand gracious images. Soli- 

 tude without friend or cigar is indeed in- 

 supportable to those who suffer. . , 



