"In March it came over the rooves and appeared in my room in Berlin and I rubbed my eyes unable to believe what I saw. I still did not have the faintest idea of how dangerous the scamp was, but the year after, 1849, I got more than an inkling of it. Returning home hot-headed from a heated public rally, I slept lying down on the windowsill, and the malicious heavenly body shone down on me for several hours." "And?" "And the following day I had not only a headache, but also a definite antipathy for many things and people I had formerly held high in my feeling, thought and estimation. Poetry had broken in and colleague, do you know what it means when poetry breaks into the life of a solicitor's clerk in the Royal Prussian Legal Service?" "No, thank God. Bear in mind that we have written to each other only across regional borders." "True enough, but I didn't know either and only today can I speak of it. You've spent the whole night dreaming of Lex Romana and the statute book and then you wake up and try to recall what you've dreamed about. You succeed only too well and then the misery starts. You look from your pillow over to your bookcase and suddenly a desire takes hold of you that you can scarcely master to jump out of bed, take the whole box of tricks in your arms--and--and--and--do unspeakable things to it. But you control yourself because it occurs to you how much money you've invested in this jumble, and you control yourself too fortunately for the furtherance of your career and get on with preparing your morning coffee. While you are doing this the idea comes to you with shattering power that you are at the disposal of the state without receiving an appropriate reward for it and not only does your gall bladder play up because of it, but your coffee too boils over and you eat away at your internal organ and pour the other, not down the drain, but down your throat. You have lost some of your illusions and you create new ones. There you have one of the first effects of our enemy, the moon! Yes, you have strange illusions and the strangest is that you don't blame yourself for them. Afterwards you go to the office, meet your subordinate on the way, greet him politely and now--for the first time--another dream comes to you! You remember the one that you dreamt when you lay down with your head next to the open window and the moon shone on it. You get up and look for the head of chambers, and now, and wholly and solely because of the German moon, it occurs to you that you yourself have read more than your ancestors: not just the paper, but papers, and, apart from that, Schiller and Goethe, Voltaire and Rousseau, Börne and Stahl, Ranke and Raumer and an incommensurable mixture of the latest liberal poets. You remember a lot of the drinking songs you sang at university and the meek and mild moon which just now appears perhaps as a tender sickle above you in the light blue of the morning sky, twists your mouth into a scornful