Page:Journey Round my Room by Xiavier de Maistre trans. Henry Attwell.djvu/140

122 For some time she had shared, though confusedly, the sensations of the : but she was still encumbered by the swathes of night and sleep; and these swathes seemed to her transformed into gauze and fine linen and Indian lawn. My poor soul was, as it were, enwrapped in all this paraphernalia, and the god of sleep, that he might hold her still more firmly under his sway, added to these bonds disheveled tresses of flaxen hair, ribbon bows, and pearl necklaces. Really it was pitiful to see her struggle in these toils.

The agitation of the nobler part of myself communicated itself to the ; and the latter, in its turn, reacted powerfully upon my soul.

I worked myself, at last, into a state which it would be hard to describe, while my soul, either sagaciously or by chance, hit upon a way of escaping from the gauzes by which it was being suffocated. I know