It was no more than a glimmer in the almost total darkness, but it was bright enough to cast a reflection in my sleep, first of the idea that I could not sleep, and then, a reflection of this reflection, that it was in my sleep that I had had the idea that I was not asleep, then, by a further refraction, my awakening⁠ ⁠… to a fresh doze in which I was trying to tell some friends who had come into my room that, a moment earlier, when I was asleep, I had imagined that I was not asleep. These shades were barely distinguishable; it would have required a keen⁠—and quite useless⁠—delicacy of perception to seize them all. Similarly, in later years, at Venice, long after the sun had set, when it seemed to be quite dark, I have seen, thanks to the echo, itself imperceptible, of a last note of light, held indefinitely on the surface of the canals, as though some optical pedal were being pressed, the reflection of the palaces unfurled, as though for all time, in a darker velvet, on the crepuscular greyness of the water. One of my dreams was the synthesis of what my imagination had often sought to depict, in my waking hours, of a certain seagirt place and its medieval past. In my sleep I saw a gothic fortress rising from a sea whose waves were stilled as in a painted window.