I have seen a somnambulist, but he contented himself with rising, dressing himself, making a bow, and dancing a minuet, all which he did very properly; and having again undressed himself, returned to bed and continued to sleep.
This comes not near the somnambulist of the "Encyclopædia." The last was a young seminarist, who set himself to compose a sermon in his sleep. He wrote it correctly, read it from one end to the other, or at least appeared to read it, made corrections, erased some lines, substituted others, and inserted an omitted word. He even composed music, noted it with precision, and after preparing his paper with his ruler, placed the words under the notes without the least mistake.
It is said, that an archbishop of Bordeaux has witnessed all these operations, and many others equally astonishing. It is to be wished that this prelate had affixed his attestation to the account, signed by his grand vicars, or at least by his secretary.
But supposing that this somnambulist has done all which is imputed to him, I would persist in putting the same queries to him as to a simple dreamer. I would say to him: You have dreamed more forcibly than another; but it is upon the same principle; one has had a fever only, the other a degree of madness; but both the one and the other have received ideas and sensations to which they have not attended. You have both done what you did not intend to do.
Of two dreamers, the one has not a single idea, the other a crowd; the one is as insensible as marble, while the other experiences desires and enjoyments. A lover composes a song on his mistress in a dream, and in his delirium imagines himself to be reading a tender letter from her, which he repeats aloud:
Scribit amatori meretrix; dat adultera munus
In noctis spatio miserorum vulnera durant.
—PETRONIUS, chap. civ.
Does anything pass within you during this powerful dream more than what passes every day when you are awake?
You, Mr. Seminarist, born with the gift of imitation, you have listened to some hundred sermons, and your brain is prepared to make them: moved by the talent of imitation, you have written them waking; and you are led by the same talent and impulse when you are asleep. But how have you been able to become a preacher in a dream? You went to sleep, without any desire to preach. Remember well the first time that you were led to compose the sketch of a sermon while awake. You thought not of it a quarter of an hour before; but seated in your chamber, occupied in a reverie, without any determinate ideas, your memory recalls, without your will interfering, the remembrance of a certain holiday; this holiday reminds you that sermons are delivered on that day; you remember a text; this text suggests an exordium; pens, ink, and paper, are lying near you; and you begin to write things you had not the least previous intention of writing. Such is precisely what came to pass in your noctambulism.
You believe yourself, both in the one and the other occupation, to have done only what you intended to do; and you have been directed without consciousness by all which preceded the writing of the sermon.
In the same manner when, on coming from vespers, you are shut up in your cell to meditate, you have no design to occupy yourself with the image of your fair neighbor; but it somehow or another intrudes; your imagination is inflamed; and I need not refer to the consequences. You may have experienced the same adventure in your sleep.