The man laughed. "None of these things, sir," he said. "The day has been long, and a feeling of weariness overcomes me. I should now like to sleep."
"That is some new game?" asked the King, intelligently.
"Sleep?" said the Princess Melissa. "We do not know that. What is this sleep?"
The man explained it as best he could, and his account was received with the greatest interest. Many questions were put to him.
"I perceive," said the King at last, "that this sleep is really a little death. For the time being you are dead. Take my advice, therefore, O stranger, and give it up. It is an awful risk, thus voluntarily to enter into the place of death. Suppose that one day you find something there that keeps you, and you cannot come back again."
The stranger explained that, so far was this from being the case, that every time when he went to sleep he was more afraid that something would wake him, than that he would never wake at all.
"I fear," said the King, "that this shows that you have not thought about the matter profoundly."
"Possibly not," said the stranger. "But I am as I am constructed. I sleep because I must sleep. Had I but a couch to lie upon, I could be asleep now in five minutes."
"How exciting," said the Princess Melissa.
"May we all see it? May we watch you when you are dead of the little death?"