I can bear a tolerable quantity—­modesty forbids me to say how many bottles—­and I consequently retired to my chamber in tolerably good condition.  The young merchant already lay in bed, enveloped in his chalk-white night-cap and saffron yellow night-shirt of sanitary flannel.  He was not asleep, and sought to enter into conversation with me.  He was from Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and consequently spoke at once of the Jews, declared that they had lost all feeling for the beautiful and noble, and that they sold English goods twenty-five per cent. under manufacturers’ prices.  A fancy to humbug him came over me, and I told him that I was a somnambulist, and must beforehand beg his pardon should I unwittingly disturb his slumbers.  This intelligence, as he confessed the following day, prevented him from sleeping a wink through the whole night, especially since the idea had entered his head that I, while in a somnambulistic state, might shoot him with the pistol which lay near my bed.  But in truth I fared no better myself, for I slept very little.  Dreary and terrifying fancies swept through my brain....

From this confusion I was rescued by the landlord of the Brocken, when he awoke me to see the sun rise.  On the tower I found several people already waiting, and rubbing their freezing hands; others, with sleep still in their eyes, stumbled up to us, until finally the whole silent congregation of the previous evening was reassembled, and we saw how, above the horizon, there rose a little carmine-red ball, spreading a dim, wintry light.  Far around, amid the mists, rose the mountains, as if swimming in a white rolling sea, only their summits being visible, so that we could imagine ourselves standing on a little hill in the midst of an inundated plain, in which here and there rose dry clods of earth.  To retain what I saw and felt, I sketched the following poem: 

  In the east ’tis ever brighter,
    Though the sun gleams fitfully;
  Far and wide the mountain summits
    Swim above the misty sea.

  Had I seven-league boots for travel,
    Like the fleeting winds I’d rove
  Over valley, rock, and river,
    To the home of her I love.

  From the bed where now she’s sleeping
    Soft the curtain I would slip;
  Softly kiss her childlike forehead,
    Kiss the ruby of her lip.

  Yet more softly would I whisper
    In the little lily ear,
  “Think in dreams we still are loving,
    Think I never lost thee, dear.”

Meanwhile my longing for breakfast was also great, and, after paying a few compliments to my ladies, I hastened down to drink coffee in the warm public room.  It was full time, for all within me was as sober and as sombre as in the St. Stephen’s Church at Goslar.  But with the Arabian beverage, the warm Orient thrilled through my limbs, Eastern roses breathed forth their perfumes, sweet bulbul songs resounded, the students were changed to camels, the Brocken housemaids, with their Congreverocket-glances, became houris, the Philistine noses, minarets, etc.