myself, and I clutched my arm and reiterated: "That is quite a matter of
detail." The word was found, God be praised! and that was the principal
thing. But ideas worry me without end and hinder me from falling asleep.
Nothing seemed good enough to me for this unusually rare word. At length I
sit up in bed again, grasp my head in both hands, and say, "No! it is just
this, it is impossible to let it signify emigration or tobacco factory. If
it could have meant anything like that I would have decided upon it long
since and taken the consequences." No; in reality the word is fitted to
signify something psychical, a feeling, a state. Could I not apprehend it?
and I reflect profoundly in order to find something psychical. Then it
seems to me that some one is interposing, interrupting my confab. I answer
angrily, "Beg pardon! Your match in idiocy is not to be found; no, sir!
Knitting cotton? Ah! go to hell!" Well, really I had to laugh. Might I ask
why should I be forced to let it signify knitting cotton, when I had a
special dislike to its signifying knitting cotton? I had discovered the
word myself, so, for that matter, I was perfectly within my right in
letting it signify whatsoever I pleased. As far as I was aware, I had not
yet expressed an opinion as to....

But my brain got more and more confused. At last I sprang out of bed to
look for the water-tap. I was not thirsty, but my head was in a fever, and
I felt an instinctive longing for water. When I had drunk some I got into
bed again, and determined with all my might to settle to sleep. I closed
my eyes and forced myself to keep quiet. I lay thus for some minutes
without making a movement, sweated and felt my blood jerk violently
through my veins. No, it was really too delicious the way he thought to
find money in the paper cornet! He only coughed once, too! I wonder if he
is pacing up and down there yet! Sitting on my bench? the pearly blue
sea ... the ships....