A Night Journey Round my Room

I ought to warn those people who may not like my dissertation on the Fatherland that sleep was gradually overcoming me, in spite of all my efforts to shake it off; but I am not very sure now whether I actually fell into a sound sleep, and whether the extraordinary matters I am about to relate were the creation of a dream or of a supernatural vision.

I saw a bright cloud fall from the sky and gradually come nearer to me, and it formed a sort of transparent veil over a young girl of some twenty-two or twenty-three years age. Vainly should I seek for suitable words to describe the feelings with which her appearance inspired me. Her countenance, radiant with goodness and kindness, had the charming illusion of youth, and was sweet as a dream of the future; her expression, her quiet smile, in a word, all her features, appeared to me to be the realization of that ideal being my heart had so long sought for, and whom I had despaired of ever meeting.