The clock struck
twelve, I got up and looked at my watch by the light of the gas-lit
streets; it marked the same. My dream had lasted an hour--I had gone to
bed at half-past ten.
I tried to recall it all, and did so to the smallest particular--all
except the tune the organ had played, and the words belonging to it;
they were on the tip of my tongue, and refused to come further, I got up
again and walked about the room, and felt that it had not been like a
dream at all; it was more "recollectable" than all my real adventures of
the previous day. It had ceased to be like a dream, and had become an
actuality from the moment I first touched the duchess's hand to the
moment I kissed my mother's, and the blur came. It was an entirely new
and utterly bewildering experience that I had gone through.
In a dream there are always breaks, inconsistencies, lapses,
incoherence, breaches of continuity, many links missing in the chain;
only at points is the impression vivid enough to stamp itself afterwards
on the waking mind, and even then it is never so really vivid as the
impression of real life, although it ought to have seemed so in the
dream: One remembers it well on awaking, but soon it fades, and then it
is only one's remembrance of it that one remembers.
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