still hummed in my ear, as though I had called out or sung in my sleep.
Suddenly I felt completely rested, and turned to look about me. It was
dark and mild, a stone-still world. The sky was paler than the ring of
mountains round me; I lay in the center of a city of peaks, at the foot of
a great cliff, huge to the point of deformity. The wind began to blow, and
suddenly there was a booming in the distance. Then came a streak of
lightning, and immediately after the thunder rolled down like a gigantic
avalanche between the most distant peaks. It was matchless to lie there
listening, and a supernatural delight, a thrill of enjoyment, ran through
me. A stranger madness filled me than I had ever felt before, and I gave
it expression by laughing aloud in wanton and humorous abandon. Many a
thought ran through my mind, witticisms alternating with moments of such
great sorrow that I lay sighing deeply. The lightning and thunder came
closer, and it began to rain--a torrential rain. The echoes were
overpowering; all nature was an uproar, a hullabalooing. I tried to
conquer the night by shouting at it, lest mysteriously it should rob me of
my strength and leave me without a will. These mountains, I thought, are
sheer incantations against my journey, great planted curses that block my
path. Or perhaps I have only strayed into a mountains' trade union? But I
nod my head repeatedly. That means I am brave and happy. Perhaps after all
they are only stuffed mountains.

More lightning and thunder and torrential rain; it felt as though the
near-by echo had slapped me, reverberating a hundred times through me.
Never mind. I have read about many battles and been in a rain of bullets
before this. Yet in a moment of sadness and humility in the presence of
the powers about me, I weep and think:

"Who am I now among men? Or am I lost already? Am I nothing already?"