A youth who was deemed worthy, by his strength and resolution, to be initiated into the Assyrian service, was invited to the table and conversation of the grand master or grand prior; he was then intoxicated with henbane (haschish) and carried into the garden, which, on awakening, he believed to be paradise. Everything around him, the houris in particular, contributed to confirm his delusion. After he had experienced as much of the pleasures of paradise—which the prophet has promised to the blessed—as his strength would admit, after quaffing enervating delight from the eyes of the houris and intoxicating wine from the glittering goblets, he sank into the lethargy produced by debility and the opiate, on awakening from which, after a few hours, he again found himself by the side of his superior. The latter endeavoured to convince him that corporeally he had not left his side, but that spiritually he had been wrapped into paradise, and had then enjoyed a foretaste of the bliss which awaits the faithful, who devote their lives to the service of the faith and the obedience of their chief. Thus did these infatuated youths blindly dedicate themselves as the tools of murder, and eagerly sought an opportunity to sacrifice their terrestrial, in order to become the partakers of eternal life. To this day, Constantinople and Cairo show what an incredible charm opium with henbane exerts on the drowsy indolence of the Turk and the fiery imagination of the Arab, and explains the fury with which those youths the enjoyment of these rich pastiles (haschish), and the confidence produced in them, that they are able to undertake anything or everything. From the use of these pastiles they were called Hashishin (herb-eaters,) which, in the mouths of Greeks and Crusaders, has been transformed into the word Assassin, and as synonymous with murder, has immortalized the history of the order in all the languages of Europe.[23]