Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Stories for the Road.

This is your host and storyteller, John Haggardorn.

And today, Chapter 40, The Breakfast, Part 2.

May we inquire, what is this recipe you've been discussing?

asked Debray at the breakfast table.

Oh, yes, returned Monty Cristo.

I make no secret of it.

It is a mixture of excellent opium,

which I fetched myself from Canton in order to have it pure,

and the best hashish which grows in the east,

that is, between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

These two ingredients are mixed in equal proportions and formed into pills.

Ten minutes after one is taken, the effect is produced.

Ask Baron Franz de Pinedénez. I think he tasted them one day."

"'Yes,' replied Morserf. "'He said something about it to me.'

"'But,' said Beauchamp, who, as became a journalist, was very incredulous.

"'You always carry this drug about you?' "'Always.'

"'Would it be an indiscretion to ask to see those precious pills?'

"'Continued Beauchamp, hoping to take him at a disadvantage.'

"'No, monsieur,' returned the Count,

"'and he drew from his pocket a marvellous casket,

"'formed out of a single emerald enclosed by a golden lid

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