I determined then to sit up all night, and to enable me to do so took two large cups of strong and highly flavored coffee.

I went home at seven o’clock to get the papers which had been promised me, but found a note telling me I would not get them until the next day.

Thus in every respect disappointed, I returned to the house where I had dined, and played a game of piquet, without any of the moody fits to which I was ordinarily subject.

I did justice to the coffee, but I was not at ease as to how I would pass the night.

I went to bed at my usual hour, thinking that if I did not get my usual allowance, I would at least get four or five hours, sufficient to carry me through the day.

I was mistaken.  I had been two hours in bed and was wider awake than ever; I was in intense mental agitation, and fancied my brain a mill, the wheels of which revolved, grinding nothing.

The idea came to me to turn this fancy to account, and I did so, amusing myself by putting into verse a story I had previously read in an English paper.

I did so without difficulty, and as I did not sleep I undertook another, but in vain.  A dozen verses had exhausted my poetic faculty, and I gave it up.

I passed the night without sleep, and without even being stupified for a moment, I arose and passed the day in the same manner.  When on the next night I went to bed at my usual hour I made a calculation, and found out that I had not slept for forty hours.

Section X. Chocolate—­its origin.

The first visiters of America were impelled by a thirst of gold.  At that time nothing was appreciated but the products of the mines.  Agriculture and commerce were in their infancy, and political economy was as yet unborn.  The Spaniards found then the precious metals, an almost sterile discovery, for they decreased in value as they became more abundant.  We have other and better ways to increase wealth.

In those regions, however, where a genial sun confers immense fruitfulness on the soil, the cultivation of sugar and coffee was found advantageous.  The potato, indigo, vanilla, guano, cocoa, were also discovered; these are its real treasures.

If these discoveries took place in spite of the barriers opposed to curiosity by a jealous nation, we may reasonably hope that they will be multiplied ten-fold in the course of the years to come; and that the explorations of the savants of old Europe will enrich the three kingdoms with a multitude of substances which will give us new sensations, as vanilla has, or augment our alimentary resources, as cocoa.

It has been determined to call chocolate the result of the paste of cocoa burnt with sugar and the bark of the cinnamon.  This is the technical definition of chocolate.  Sugar is the integral part, for without sugar the compound is cocoa and, chocolate.  To sugar, cinnamon and cocoa is joined the delicious aroma of vanilla, and thus is obtained the ne plus ultra to which this preparation can be carried.