to you,
what sleep really is, and that people can sleep without dreaming at
all; and as for what dreaming is, you will know as well as I do, if you
will read the 'Somnium Scipionis,' and Artimidorus's great work on
Dreams, and the Frankfort Dreambook; but, you see, you never read
_anything_ and that's why you are always making such a hash of
everything you have to do with."

"Now, my dear old man," the Commissionsrath replied, "don't you go and
get yourself into a state of excitement. I can see, easily enough, how
you may have allowed yourself to break out of bounds a bit last night,
and then have got somehow into company with a set of mountebanks, who
got the better of you when you had more liquor than you could carry;
but what I cannot make out is, why, in all the earth, when you had once
got out of the place, you didn't go straight home to your bed, like a
reasonable man? Whatever for did you go wandering about the streets?"

"Oh, Bosswinkel!" lamented Tussman, "my old friend! my chum at the Grey
Friars!--don't you go and insult me by base insinuations of that sort.
Let me tell you that the infernal, diabolical enchantment which was
practised upon me did not fairly commence till I got _into_ the street.
For, when I came to the Town-hall, every one of its windows was blazing
with light, and there was music playing inside--a brass band, playing
waltzes and so forth. How it came about I can't tell you; but, though
I'm not a particularly tall man, I found that I was able to reach up on
my tiptoes so that I could see in at the windows. And _what_ did I
see?--Oh, gracious powers of Heaven! _whom_ did I see? _Your daughter_,
Miss Albertine Bosswinkel, dressed as a bride, and waltzing like the
very deuce (if I may permit myself such an expression) with a young
gentleman! I thumped on the window; I cried out, 'Dearest Miss
Bosswinkel, what are you doing? What sort of goings-on are those, here,
at this time of the night?' But just as I was saying so, there came
some horrible beast of a fellow down King Street, pulled my legs away
from under me as he passed, and ran away from me, with them, in
peals of laughter. As for me, wretched Clerk of the Privy Chancery
that I am, I plumped down flat into the filthy mud of the gutter.
'Watchman!' I shouted, 'Police! patrol; guard, turn out! Come
here!--look sharp!--Stop the thief!--stop him!--he's got both my legs!'
But upstairs in the Town-hall everything had suddenly grown pitch-dark,