just on the point of falling asleep, when a park-keeper put his hand on my
shoulder and said:

"You must not sit here and go to sleep!"

"No?" I said, and sprang immediately up, my unfortunate position rising
all at once vividly before my eyes. I must do something; find some way or
another out of it. To look for situations had been of no avail to me. Even
the recommendations I showed had grown a little old, and were written by
people all too little known to be of much use; besides that, constant
refusals all through the summer had somewhat disheartened me. At all
events, my rent was due, and I must raise the wind for that; the rest
would have to wait a little.

Quite involuntarily I had got paper and pencil into my hand again, and I
sat and wrote mechanically the date, 1848, in each corner. If only now one
single effervescing thought would grip me powerfully, and put words into
my mouth. Why, I had known hours when I could write a long piece, without
the least exertion, and turn it off capitally, too.

I am sitting on the seat, and I write, scores of times, 1848. I write this
date criss-cross, in all possible fashions, and wait until a workable idea
shall occur to me. A swarm of loose thoughts flutter about in my head. The
feeling of declining day makes me downcast, sentimental; autumn is here,
and has already begun to hush everything into sleep and torpor. The flies
and insects have received their first warning. Up in the trees and down in
the fields the sounds of struggling life can be heard rustling, murmuring,
restless; labouring not to perish. The down-trodden existence of the whole
insect world is astir for yet a little while. They poke their yellow heads
up from the turf, lift their legs, feel their way with long feelers and