ing only separated us with the
certainty that at night we should meet again. Thus then," continued my
visionary, "I commenced a history utterly separate from the history of
the world, and it went on alternately with my harsh and chilling history
of the day, equally regular and equally continuous. And what, you ask,
was that history? Methought I was a prince in some Eastern island that
had no features in common with the colder north of my native home. By
day I looked upon the dull walls of a German town, and saw homely or
squalid forms passing before me; the sky was dim and the sun cheerless.
Night came on with her thousand stars, and brought me the dews of sleep.
Then suddenly there was a new world; the richest fruits hung from the
trees in clusters of gold and purple. Palaces of the quaint fashion of
the sunnier climes, with spiral minarets and glittering cupolas, were
mirrored upon vast lakes sheltered by the palm-tree and banana. The sun
seemed a different orb, so mellow and gorgeous were his beams; birds and
winged things of all hues fluttered in the shining air; the faces and
garments of men were not of the northern regions of the world, and their
voices spoke a tongue which, strange at first, by degrees I interpreted.
Sometimes I made war upon neighbouring kings; sometimes I chased the
spotted pard through the vast gloom of immemorial forests; my life
was at once a life of enterprise and pomp. But above all there was the
history of my love! I thought there were a thousand difficulties in the
way of attaining its possession. Many were the rocks I had to scale, and
the battles to wage, and the fortresses to storm, in order to win her as
my bride. But at last" (continued the enthusiast), "she _is_ won, she
is my own! Time in that wild world, which I visit nightly, passes not
so slowly as in this, and yet an hour may be the same as a year. This
continuity of existence, this successive series of dreams, so different
from the broken incoherence of other men's sleep, at times bewilders me
with strange and suspicious thoughts. What if this glorious sleep be a
real life, and this dull waking the true repose? Why not? What is there
more faithful in the one than in the other? And there have I garnered
and collected all of pleasure that I am capable of feeling. I seek
no joy in this world; I form no ties, I feast not, nor love, nor make
merry; I am only impatient till the hour when I may re-enter my royal
realms and pour my ren