<‘Morpheus, take me into your embrace.’ Morpheus is a god whose devotee I would most gladly be. Do you recall that young lady who was so offended when someone said to her: ‘Quand je suis passé chez vous, vous étiez encore dans les bras de Morphée’?3 She thought that Morpheus [Morfei] was some man called Andrei Malafei. What a ridiculous name!… But it’s a wonderful expression: dans les bras; I can imagine so vividly and gracefully the position dans les bras – and particularly vividly the bras themselves – arms bare to the shoulder with little dimples and little folds, and a white nightdress indiscreetly open.—How lovely women’s arms are, specially if there is just one little dimple! I stretched myself out in bed. Do you remember, St Thomas4 was always telling us it was bad form to stretch. Just like Diedrichs. The two of them were riding along together. The sport was excellent and just behind them I was riding along too, tally-hoing to my dog Angel, and my other dog Raider was catching enough game for them all, it was a regular slaughter. And wasn’t Seriozha furious!—He was with his sister.—What a charmer Masha is – and what a wife she’d make for someone! Morpheus would make a fine old hunter, if he could cope with a bit of bareback riding, and he might even find you a wife into the bargain.—Phew, just look how St Thomas is bowling along there – and there’s the young lady charging along behind them all; it’s no use just stretching out, though it is really nice dans les bras. At this point I must have fallen asleep properly.—I dreamt that I was trying to catch up with the lady, when suddenly there was a mountain in front of us and I was pushing her, pushing her up it with my hands – but she fell down to the bottom (I had pushed my pillow off the bed), and I rode home to dinner. It was not ready: why not? Vasily started to throw his weight about and to bluster (which made the lady of the house who was on the other side of the partition ask to know what all the noise was about, so the chambermaid explained – I could hear it all, because that too was part of my dream). Vasily came in and everyone was trying to ask him why the dinner wasn’t ready, but they could see – Vasily was wearing a camisole, and a ribbon across his shoulder. I felt scared, and fell to my knees weeping and kissing his feet; I enjoyed this just as much as if I had been kissing her feet – in fact more so. Vasily ignored me and asked: ‘Is it loaded?’ Diedrichs, the pastry-cook from Tula, replied ‘Ready!’—Very well, fire!—And they fired a volley (the shutter banged).—and then there we were walking down Polskaya Street, Vasily and I, but it was no longer Vasily but she. Suddenly, horrors! I noticed that my trousers were so short that my bare knees were showing. I cannot describe how awful I felt (my bare knees had come out of the bedclothes); in my dream I spent a long time trying to cover them up and at last succeeded. But there was more to come: now we were going down Polskaya Street again and the Queen of Württemberg was there; but suddenly I was dancing a Ukrainian kazachok. Why? Because I couldn’t help it. At length someone brought me an overcoat and a pair of boots; but now it was even worse – there were no trousers at all. Of course none of this could be happening in reality: I was most likely asleep and dreaming. I woke up.—And began to drop off again, thinking, then ran out of thoughts and began to see pictures in my imagination, and my imaginings were quite coherent, picturesque even, but then my imagination itself went to sleep, and all that remained were obscure and confused notions; and then my body too fell asleep. A dream is always composed of first and last impressions.>
