"Rest, rest"—the word sounds like a gnome's irony from all the corners of my room, for my work is heaping up on all sides and threatens to smother me.
"Work! Work!" This is the voice of conscience. It is like the voice of a brutal waggoner that would urge a dead ass on to new efforts.
My paper is in its place. For hours I have sat and stared at it brooding. It is still empty.
A disagreeably sweetish odour which arises impudently to my nose makes me start.
There stands the pitcher of herb tea which my landlady brought in at bedtime.
The dear woman.
"Man must sweat," she had declared. "If the whole man gets into a sweat then the evil humours are exuded, and the healthy sap gets a chance to circulate until one is full of it."
And saying that she wiped her greasy lips for she likes to eat a piece of rye bread with goose grease before going to bed.
Irritatedly I push the little pitcher aside, but its grayish green steam whirls only the more pertinaciously about me. The clouds assume strange forms, which tower over each other and whirl into each other like the phantoms over a witch's cauldron.
And at last the fumes combine into a human form, at first misty and without outlines but gradually becoming more sharply defined.