Note 280 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Théophile Gautier, who was himself a member of a hashish club, tries to make us believe (Les Fleurs du Mal, p. 57 et seq.), that Baudelaire was addicted to the use of narcotic poisons only with the object of ‘physiological experiment’; but we know the tendency of the degenerate to represent the impulsions of which they are ashamed as acts of free will, for which they have all sorts of palliating explanations.