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.