Diary of a Drug Fiend

88 The Diary of a Drug Fiend at the same time he. couldn’t risk pulling off the coup of his life in case there was a hitch, so he would get @ move on and see if he couldn’t raise five thousand on his own somewhere else, in which case he’d let me have some of his own stock anyway. He wanted me ‘in the deal if it was only for a sovereign, simply because of my luck. _ So off he ran in a great hurry. Lou and I got a car and spent the afternoon in the Bois du Boulogne. It seemed as if the cocaine had taken hold of us with new force, or else it was the addition of the heroin. We were living at the same terrific speed as on that first wild night. The intensity was even more extra- ordinary ; but we were not being carried away by it. In one sense, each hour lasted a fraction of a second, and yet, in another sense, every second lasted a life- time. We were able to appreciate the minutest details of life to the full. I want to explain this very thoroughly. “ William the Conqueror, 1066, William Rufus, 1087.” One can sum up the whole period of the reign of the Duke of Normandy in a phrase. At the same time, an historian who had made a special study of that part of English History might be able to write ten volumes of details, and he might, in a sense, have both aspects of his knowledge present to his mind at the same moment. _We were in a similar condition. The hours flashed by like so many streaks of lightning, yet each dis- charge illuminated every detail of the landscape; we could grasp everything at once. It was as if we had acquired a totally new mental faculty as superior to the normal course of thought as the all-comprehending brain of a great man of science is to that of a savage, though the two men are both looking with the same optical instruments at the same blackbeetle. It is impossible to convey, to any one who has not experienced it, the overwhelming rapture of -this condition. | Another extraordinary feature of the situation was