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Gautier wrote about the club in an article entitled “Le Club des Hachichin”, published in the Revue des Deux Mondes in February 1846, recounting his recent visit. While he is often cited as the founder of the club, in the article he says he was attending their séances for the first time that evening and made clear that others were sharing a familiar experience with him.
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“One December evening… I arrived in a remote quarter in the middle of Paris, a kind
of solitary oasis which the river encircles in its arms on both sides as though to defend
it against the encroachments of civilisation. It was in an old house on the Ile St Louis,
the Pimodan hotel built by Lauzun, where the strange club which I had recently joined
held its monthly séance. I was attending for the first time.”
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After a description of the hotel’s interior, Gautier arrives in a room where “several human shapes
were stirring about a table, and as soon as the light reached me and I was recognised, a
vigorous shout shook the sonorous depths of the ancient edifice. ‘It’s he! It’s he!’ cried
some voices together; ‘let’s give him his due!’ “
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His “due”, of course, was his potion of dawamesk. “The doctor stood by a buffet on which lay
a platter filled with small Japanese saucers. He spooned a morsel of paste or greenish
jam about as large as a thumb from a crystal vase, and placed it next to the silver spoon
on each saucer. The doctor’s face radiated enthusiasm; his eyes glittered, his purple
cheeks were aglow, the veins in his temples stood out strongly, and he breathed heavily
through dilated nostrils. ‘This will be deducted from your share in Paradise,’ he said as
he handed me my portion…”
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There follows a banquet. By the time the meal ends, the hashish is beginning to take effect. His
neighbours begin to appear “somewhat strange. Their pupils became big as a screech owl’s;
their noses stretched into elongated probosces; their mouths expanded like bell bottoms.
Faces were shaded in supernatural light”. Meanwhile “a deadening warmth pervaded my
limbs, and dementia, like a wave which breaks foaming on to a rock, then withdraws to
break again, invaded and left my brain, finally enveloping it altogether. That strange
visitor, hallucination, had come to dwell within me.” (…)