I can bear a tolerable quantity--modesty forbids me to say how many
bottles--and I consequently retired to my chamber in tolerably good
condition. The young merchant already lay in bed, enveloped in his
chalk-white night-cap and saffron yellow night-shirt of sanitary
flannel. He was not asleep, and sought to enter into conversation with
me. He was from Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and consequently spoke at once of
the Jews, declared that they had lost all feeling for the beautiful and
noble, and that they sold English goods twenty-five per cent. under
manufacturers' prices. A fancy to humbug him came over me, and I told
him that I was a somnambulist, and must beforehand beg his pardon should
I unwittingly disturb his slumbers. This intelligence, as he confessed
the following day, prevented him from sleeping a wink through the whole
night, especially since the idea had entered his head that I, while in a
somnambulistic state, might shoot him with the pistol which lay near my
bed. But in truth I fared no better myself, for I slept very little.
Dreary and terrifying fancies swept through my brain....

From this confusion I was rescued by the landlord of the Brocken, when
he awoke me to see the sun rise. On the tower I found several people
already waiting, and rubbing their freezing hands; others, with sleep
still in their eyes, stumbled up to us, until finally the whole silent
congregation of the previous evening was reassembled, and we saw how,
above the horizon, there rose a little carmine-red ball, spreading a
dim, wintry light. Far around, amid the mists, rose the mountains, as if
swimming in a white rolling sea, only their summits being visible, so
that we could imagine ourselves standing on a little hill in the midst
of an inundated plain, in which here and there rose dry clods of earth.
To retain what I saw and felt, I sketched the following poem:

In the east 'tis ever brighter,