If, as would sometimes happen, she had
the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking hours, I would
abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like people who set
out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city that they have
always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what
has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory of her would
dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my dream.
When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours,
the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively,
when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own
position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed
during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused,
and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of
insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a
different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has
only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course,
and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will
conclude that he has just gone to bed.
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