A stunning clang of metal suddenly thrilled through me, and I became
conscious of the objects in my room again: one of the fire-irons had
fallen as Pierre opened the door to bring me my draught. My heart was
palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to leave my draught beside me;
I would take it presently.

As soon as I was alone again, I began to ask myself whether I had been
sleeping. Was this a dream--this wonderfully distinct vision--minute in
its distinctness down to a patch of rainbow light on the pavement,
transmitted through a coloured lamp in the shape of a star--of a strange
city, quite unfamiliar to my imagination? I had seen no picture of
Prague: it lay in my mind as a mere name, with vaguely-remembered
historical associations--ill-defined memories of imperial grandeur and
religious wars.

Nothing of this sort had ever occurred in my dreaming experience before,
for I had often been humiliated because my dreams were only saved from
being utterly disjointed and commonplace by the frequent terrors of
nightmare. But I could not believe that I had been asleep, for I
remembered distinctly the gradual breaking-in of the vision upon me, like
the new images in a dissolving view, or the growing distinctness of the
landscape as the sun lifts up the veil of the morning mist. And while I
was conscious of this incipient vision, I was also conscious that Pierre
came to tell my father Mr. Filmore was waiting for him, and that my
father hurried out of the room. No, it was not a dream; was it--the
thought was full of tremulous exultation--was it the poet's nature in me,
hitherto only a troubled yearning sensibility, now manifesting itself
suddenly as spontaneous creation? Surely it was in this way that Homer
saw the plain of Troy, that Dante saw the abodes of the departed, that
Milton saw the earthward flight of the Tempter. Was it that my illness