Here is the first experiment I tried: I was about to go to Vivarais to spend a fortnight in the country with the family of a friend of mine. Before leaving, I bought a bottle of a scent from a well-to-do perfumier...

I was very careful not to uncork this bottle until I reached the place where I was to remain for some weeks; but during my whole stay I made constant use of its contents, impregnating my pocket handkerchief constantly with it, in spite of the complaints and jests which this experiment did not fail to excite around me.

...on the day of my departure... I hermetically sealed the bottle, which remained for several months afterwards at the bottom of a cupboard, until I gave it to a servant who used to enter my room early in the morning, indicating him to sprinkle a few drops of the odoriferous liquid on my pillow, one morning when he saw me sleeping.

Moreover, I left him free to do it any day, at his leisure, lest the expectation of this experience alone should influence my dreams by troubling my mind.

Eight or ten days passed; my dreams, written every morning, revealed no particular reminiscence of Vivarais (certainly my flask had not yet been touched).

One night I arrived, or thought I was returning to the country I had inhabited the previous year. Mountains dotted with tall chestnut trees rose before me; a basalt rock appeared before me so sharply delineated that I could have drawn it in great detail. I imagined I was meeting the postman bringing me a letter from my father. This letter took my mind in another direction, evoking other memories and images, and I was already far from the surroundings of Aubenas when I returned to the real world.

The same experience repeated several times, at intervals of several days and months, always produced the same result... I only observe that the impressionability is marred by too frequent use... Two of the perfumes that I used, one nine times, the other ten times in the space of two months, no longer regularly produce the original effect...

I let the scents sit for a while, and then I came up with the idea... to determine whether the mixing of two scents would provoke the mixing of two memories. A few drops of the perfume that reminded me of Vivarais were--while I was sleeping, and following my instructions--sprinkled on my pillow. At the same time, a few drops of another scent, with which I had often had my handkerchief impregnated at a time when I was working in Mr D.'s painting studio, were also scattered on my pillow. This test, repeated three times, gave the following results:

The first time I dreamt that I was in a mountainous country, following with my eyes the work of an artist who projected on canvas a most picturesque point of view. Evidently, there was a marriage between the reminiscences of Vivarais, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ideas of painting and artistic compositions related to the studio.

The second experience was almost non-existent. One of my former workshop companions was involved in several episodes of a confused dream; but I was unable, I confess, to read the operations of my mind clearly enough to draw precise conclusions.

As to the third experiment... I seemed to be in the dining room of a house in Vivarais, dining with my host's family, gathered with my own. Suddenly, the door opens and Monsieur D., the painter who was my teacher, announces himself. He arrives in the company of a totally naked girl, whom I recognise as one of the most beautiful models we had in the studio.

Monsieur D. tells us that the car in which they were travelling together had overturned, that they had come to ask for hospitality, etc.; and the dream is complicated by several incidents, unnecessary to relate here, where it is only necessary to note the simultaneous evocation of these two orders of memories, those of Vivarais and those of my former painting studio, which have been united...