O night and powers of heaven, how perfect is the blackness of your infinite vault--how lofty, how remote its inaccessible depths where it lies spread in an intangible, yet audible, silence! Freshly does the lulling breath of night blow in your face, until once more you relapse into snoring oblivion, and your poor neighbour turns angrily in his corner as he begins to be conscious of your weight.

Then again you awake, but this time to find yourself confronted with only fields and steppes.
Everywhere in the ascendant is the desolation of space.

But suddenly the ciphers on a verst stone leap to the eye! Morning is rising, and on the chill, gradually paling line of the horizon you can see gleaming a faint gold streak.

The wind freshens and grows keener, and you snuggle closer in your cloak; yet how glorious is that freshness, and how marvellous the sleep in which once again you become enfolded! A jolt!--and for the last time you return to consciousness.

By now the sun is high in the heavens, and you hear a voice cry "gently, gently!" as a farm waggon issues from a by-road.