l had four days before I went on to Italy, and so I decided to
take one more mountain. I slept at the Stein inn, and started in the
morning to do that agreeable first mountain of all, the Titlis, whose
shining genial head attracted me. I did not think a guide necessary, but
a boy took me up by a track near Gadmen, and left me to my Siegfried map
some way up the great ridge of rocks that overlooks the Engstlen Alp. I
a little overestimated my mountaineering, and it came about that I was
benighted while I was still high above the Joch Pass on my descent. Some
of this was steep and needed caution. I had to come down slowly with my
folding lantern, in which a reluctant candle went out at regular
intervals, and I did not reach the little inn at Engstlen Alp until long
after eleven at night. By that time I was very tired and hungry.

They told me I was lucky to get a room, only one stood vacant; I should
certainly not have enjoyed sleeping on a billiard table after my day's
work, and I ate a hearty supper, smoked for a time, meditated emptily,
and went wearily to bed.

But I could not sleep. Usually, I am a good sleeper, but ever and again
when I have been working too closely or over-exerting myself I have
spells of wakefulness, and that night after perhaps an hour's heavy
slumber I became thinly alert and very weary in body and spirit, and I
do not think I slept again. The pain in my leg that the panther had torn
had been revived by the day's exertion. For the greater part of my life
insomnia has not been disagreeable to me. In the night, in the
stillness, one has a kind of detachment from reality, one floats there
without light, without weight, feeling very little of one's body. One
has a certain disembodiment and one can achieve a magnanimity of
thought, forgiveness and self-forgetfulness that are impossible while
the body clamors upon one's senses. But that night, because, I suppose,
I was so profoundly fatigued, I was melancholy and despondent. I could
feel again the weight of the great beast upon me as he clawed me down
and I clung--desperately, in that interminable instant before he lost
his hold....

Yes, I was extraordinarily wretched that night. I was filled with
self-contempt and self-disgust. I felt that I was utterly weak and vain,
and all the pretensions and effort of my life mere florid, fruitless
pretensions and nothing more. I had lost all control over my mind.
Things that had seemed secondary before became