Now I was indeed in pitiful plight. There was literally nothing in the
tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to the roof; in
which, as I had seen from without, there was one little square opening.
This I now knew to be the only window the tower possessed. I sat down on
the floor, in listless wretchedness. I think I must have fallen asleep,
and have slept for hours; for I suddenly became aware of existence, in
observing that the moon was shining through the hole in the roof. As she
rose higher and higher, her light crept down the wall over me, till at
last it shone right upon my head. Instantaneously the walls of the tower
seemed to vanish away like a mist. I sat beneath a beech, on the edge
of a forest, and the open country lay, in the moonlight, for miles and
miles around me, spotted with glimmering houses and spires and towers.
I thought with myself, "Oh, joy! it was only a dream; the horrible narrow
waste is gone, and I wake beneath a beech-tree, perhaps one that loves
me, and I can go where I will." I rose, as I thought, and walked about,
and did what I would, but ever kept near the tree; for always, and, of
course, since my meeting with the woman of the beech-tree far more than
ever, I loved that tree. So the night wore on. I waited for the sun to
rise, before I could venture to renew my journey. But as soon as the
first faint light of the dawn appeared, instead of shining upon me
from the eye of the morning, it stole like a fainting ghost through the
little square hole above my head; and the walls came out as the light
grew, and the glorious night was swallowed up of the hateful day. The
long dreary day passed. My shadow lay black on the floor. I felt no
hunger, no need of food. The night came. The moon shone. I watched her
light slowly descending the wall, as I might have watched, adown the
sky, the long, swift approach of a helping angel. Her rays touched me,
and I was free. Thus night after night passed away. I should have died
but for this. Every night the conviction returned, that I was free.
Every morning I sat wretchedly disconsolate. At length, when the course
of the moon no longer permitted her beams to touch me, the night was
dreary as the day.
When I slept, I was somewhat consoled by my dreams; but all the time I
dreamed, I knew that I was only dreaming. But one night, at length, the
moon, a mere shred of pallor, scattered a few thin ghostly rays upon me;
and I think I fell asleep and dreamed. I sat in an autumn night before
the vintage, on a hill overlooking my own castle. My heart sprang with
joy. Oh, to be a child again, innocent, fearless, without shame or
desire! I walked down to the castle. All were in consternation at my
absence. My sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and clung
to me, with incoherent cries, as I entered. My old friends came flocking
round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall. It was the
light of the dawn shining through the square window of my tower.
More earnestly than ever, I longed for freedom after this dream; more
drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched day. I measured by the
sunbeams, caught through the little window in the trap of my tower, how
it went by, waiting only for the dreams of the night.