After an hour, my senses begin swinging in a certain rhythm. I am ringing in tune with the great stillness—ringing with it. I look at the half-moon; it stands in the sky like a white scale, and I have a feeling of love for it; I can feel myself blushing. “It is the moon!” I say softly and passionately; “it is the moon!” and my heart strikes toward it in a soft throbbing. So for some minutes. It is blowing a little; a stranger wind comes to me a mysterious current of air. What is it? I look round, but see no one. The wind calls me, and my soul bows acknowledging the call; and I feel myself lifted into the air, pressed to an invisible breast; my eyes are dewed, I tremble—God is standing near, watching me. Again several minutes pass. I turn my head round; the stranger wind is gone, and I see something like the back of a spirit wandering silently in through the woods...
I struggle a short while with a heavy melancholy; I was worn out with emotions; I am deathly tired, and I sleep.
When I awoke the night was past. Alas, I had been going about for a long time in a sad state, full of fever, on the verge of falling down stricken with some sickness or other. Often things had seemed upside down. I had been looking at everything through inflamed eyes. A deep misery had possessed me.
It was over now.
XXV
It was autumn. The summer was gone. It passed as quickly as it had come; ah, how quickly it was gone! The days were cold now. I went out shooting and fishing—sang songs in the woods. And there were days with a thick mist that came floating in from the sea, damming up everything behind a wall of murk.
One such day something happened. I lost my way, blundered through into the woods of the annexe, and came to the Doctor's house. There were visitors there—the young ladies I had met before—young people dancing, just like madcap foals.