Baudelaire did not only translate Poe. He also translated De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Un mangeur d’opium was published in the second part of Baudelaire’s Paradis artificiels, and Baudelaire used it in different ways. He reworked the text with the goal of adapting rather than translating—it was a key element of this diptych, used to examine the effects of drugs. Baudelaire’s textual analysis provides a better understanding of his aesthetic project, which was to compare the narcotic experience to the poet’s paradise. Baudelaire was thus able to use his translation to outline his ethical position by adapting De Quincey’s work, leaving it visible—and making it readable—all the while taking part in a dialogue with the text. Though Un mangeur d’opium is not a famous text, it is nonetheless a testing ground for Baudelaire’s “mise en abyme” for his own poetic practice.