“Yes,” he said, “one should be able to find a middle course. Gird up your loins and go out to look for a midway degree between time and eternity. He who finds it may found a new religion, for he’ll then have the most enticing bait that a fisher of men ever possessed.” The orchestra stopped with a clash. The gold of the hall glittered more faintly through the tobacco smoke and through the floor boards pressed continuously a smell of decay. The party broke up and we separated, each in his own direction. I wandered a long while back and forth on the streets; I came upon streets which I did not recognize and which I have never seen since, remarkably desolate and empty streets, where the houses seemed to open their lines to give me space whithersoever I turned my steps, and then to close up again behind my back. I did not know where I had got to, before all of a sudden I stood in front of my own door. It stood wide open. I went in through the door and up the stairs. At one of the stair windows I stopped and looked at the moon: I had not previously noticed that there was moonlight that evening. But I have never either before or after seen the moon look so. One could not say that it shone. It was ashen-gray and pallid and unnaturally big. I stood a long while and stared at yonder moon, despite the fact that I was dreadfully tired and longed to get to sleep. I lived in the third story. When I had gone up two flights I thanked God there was only one left. But as I came up this flight, it struck me that the corridor was not dark, as it had always used to be, but faintly lighted like the other corridors where the moon glimmered in through the stair windows. But there were only three flights of stairs in the house besides the attic stairs; for that reason the uppermost corridor was always dark. “The door of the attic is open,” I said to myself. “The light is coming from the attic stairway. It’s unexcusable of the servants to leave the door of the attic open, for thieves might get up into the attic.” But there was no attic door. There was only an ordinary stairway like the others. I had counted wrong, then; I had still a flight to go up. But when I had mounted this flight and stood in the corridor, I had to control myself so as not to shriek aloud. For this corridor, too, was light, neither was there any attic door open, but a new stairway led up just as before. Through the stair window the moon glimmered in, and it was ashen-gray and lustreless and unnaturally big. I rushed up the stairway. I could no longer think. I tottered up another, and yet another; I did not count them any longer. I wanted to cry out, I wanted to wake that accursed house and see human beings around me; but my throat was constricted. Suddenly it occurred to me to try if I could read the names on the door-plates. What kind of people could it be that lived in this tower of Babel? The moonlight was too faint; I struck a match and held it close to a brass plate.