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STRANGE SWALLOWS
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gradually, a popular drink on the boulevards,
where the five o'clock gossip-hour at the cafes
came to be known as " the hour of absinthe."
Its use is now forbidden in the French army and
navy, and no wonder. The evil effects of drink
ing it are very apparent: utter derangement of
the digestive system, weakened frame, limp
muscles, pappy brain, jumpy heart, horrible
dreams and hallucinations, with paralysis or
idiocy to bring down the curtain.
In that seductive, though gruesome book,
IVormwood^ Marie Corelli gives a most graphic
picture of an absintheur^ once a gay young
banker, who, through trouble of no ordinary
kind, gradually came under the spell of the
" green fairy." I forget how many murders he
committed; but his awful experiences and
hallucinations will never leave anybody who has
read the book. He is haunted for some days by
a leopard who accompanies him on his walks
abroad, and who lies down at the foot of his bed
at night-time—the "jim-jams," in fact, in their
worst form.
" There are two terrible verses," says a writer
on the subject, " in the Revelations of St. John.
" And the third angel sounded his trumpet, and
there fell a great star from the heavens, burning like
a lamp, and it fell upon a third part of the rivers
and upon the fountains of waters. And the name
of the star is called Wormwood ; and the third part
of the waters became Wormwood, and many men
died of the waters because they were made bitter."
Which seems a very appropriate quotation ;