Remiremont at midnight, and feeling very wakeful I pushed on up the
valley under great woods of pines; and at last, diverging up a little
path, I settled on a clump of trees sheltered and, as I thought, warm,
and lay down there to sleep till morning; but, on the contrary, I lay
awake a full hour in the fragrance and on the level carpet of the pine
needles looking up through the dark branches at the waning moon, which
had just risen, and thinking of how suitable were pine-trees for a man
to sleep under.

'The beech,' I thought, 'is a good tree to sleep under, for nothing
will grow there, and there is always dry beech-mast; the yew would be
good if it did not grow so low, but, all in all, pine-trees are the
best.' I also considered that the worst tree to sleep under would be
the upas tree. These thoughts so nearly bordered on nothing that,
though I was not sleepy, yet I fell asleep. Long before day, the moon
being still lustrous against a sky that yet contained a few faint
stars, I awoke shivering with cold.

In sleep there is something diminishes us. This every one has noticed;
for who ever suffered a nightmare awake, or felt in full consciousness
those awful impotencies which lie on the other side of slumber? When
we lie down we give ourselves voluntarily, yet by the force of nature,
to powers before which we melt and are nothing. And among the strange
frailties of sleep I have noticed cold.

Here was a warm place under the pines where I could rest in great
comfort on pine needles still full of the day; a covering for the
beasts underground that love an even heat--the best of floors for a
tired man. Even the slight wind that blew under the waning moon was
warm, and the stars were languid and not brilliant, as though