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Marry a peasant girl? How am I to set about it?" he asked himself

again, and could not find an answer. "I haven't slept all night,

though, and I can't think it out clearly," he said to himself.

"I'll work it out later. One thing's certain, this night has

decided my fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not

the real thing," he told himself. "It's all ever so much simpler

and better...."

"How beautiful!" he thought, looking at the strange, as it were,

mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudlets resting right

over his head in the middle of the sky. "How exquisite it all is

in this exquisite night! And when was there time for that

cloud-shell to form? Just now I looked at the sky, and there was

nothing in it-only two white streaks. Yes, and so imperceptibly

too my views of life changed!"