specks and atoms in the universe. You are no wiser than I. But if you
should go so far as to ask me what is eternity, then I know quite as much
in this matter, too, and reply thus: Eternity is merely unborn time,
nothing but unborn time.

My friend, come here to me and I will take a mirror from my pocket and
reflect the sun on your face, my friend.

You lie in bed till ten or eleven in the morning, yet you are weary,
exhausted, when you get up. I see you in my mind's eye as you go out into
the street; the morning has dawned too early on your blinking eyes. I rise
at five quite refreshed. It is still dark outdoors, yet there is enough to
look at--the moon, the stars, the clouds, and the weather portents for the
day. I prophesy the weather for many hours ahead. In what key do the winds
whistle? Is the crack of the ice in the Glimma light and dry, or deep and
long? These are splendid portents, and as it grows lighter, I add the
visible signs to the audible ones, and learn still more.

Then a narrow streak of daylight appears far down in the east, the stars
fade from the sky, and soon light reigns over all. A crow flies over the
woods, and I warn Madame not to go outside the hut or she will be
devoured.

But if fresh snow has fallen, the trees and copses and the great rocks
take on giant, unearthly shapes, as though they had come from another
world in the night. A storm-felled pine with its root torn up looks like a
witch petrified in the act of performing strange rites.

Here a hare has sprung by, and yonder are the tracks of a solitary
reindeer. I shake out my sleeping bag and after hanging it high in a tree