And the silence-bearing night, its bell-tone quiet and gentle, recreated itself there before his eyes, his eyes unfolded, he himself once more unfolded, the night again unfolded, mysteriously blind with silence, pregnant with shadows, liberal and loving in recovered naturalness, the night which was being swept along, carrying him onward in her branches, in her plumage, in her arms, in her breath, on her breast. He lay. He lay, he rested, he was allowed to rest on. But, even as he rested, he also knew that the silence of the night’s happenings was only a prelude, that they must come to an end. For not only had the un-space flowed into the limits of space, but his body had been flooded back from there, he lay bodily in his bed, his feelings became more and more bodily, his was a bodily peace, and in the fullness of his peace he perceived that the fever had waned—beneficent and buoyant, the cool still waves of every night-ending as far back as he could remember. And just as the hour of lessening fever came back to the physical-earthly, so also the night came to the diurnal hour, hurried toward its rim, toward the hour of earth’s recurrent fulfillment, of earth’s recurrent efformation, toward earthly night. Still nothing happened, the night-darkness held, only the silence became deflated, lost its fullness, creased with scarcely perceptible tracings, very uncertain and perceptible only to the keenest listening, the silence seemed to ruffle itself back from its uttermost borders, to loosen up; darkness-enflooded creation coming softly into being was being engraved into the uneventfulness of silence by a loving gentle hand. Name after name arose at the soft night-summons, formed itself to an entity with remembrance, became firm by memory, becoming through memory a participant in the creation. Did a cock crow in the distance? Were there dogs barking out there?—the footsteps of the guards, as if they too had been surrendered from un-space, were making their rounds of the palace as before, the wall-fountain drizzled more distinctly as if having gained in water-supply, and the window-sash framed anew the abundance of stars, the head of the snake conjurer flickering brightly in their midst. Breath-quickened the silence, breath-filled the night, and growing out of the night and the silence was that which was always at hand, the breathing world-sleep. The darkness was breathing again, becoming more and more formed, more and more creaturely, more and more earthly, richer and richer in shadows. At first shapelessly, scarcely recognizable, in a certain sense like a point of noise, in scraps of tone and in separate tones, then condensing and collecting into audible form, the creaturely was approaching; it was a creaking and rattling moan, and it came hither from the peasant-carts that were traveling along in ever-narrowing rows bringing victuals to the morning market; sleepy-slow they moved onward, with a rumbling of wheels in the pavement ruts, the creaking of axles, the gritty stroke of the wheel-rims on the curbstones, the click of chains and of harnesses, sometimes with the snorting groan of an ox, sometimes with the sound of a sleepy call, and often the soft, heavy pulling-gait of the animals came into an evenness of step that was like the march of the breath. Breathing creatures wandered through the breath of the night, fields and gardens and nourishment wandered with them, they too breathing, and the breath of all life was opened to receive the creature, opened to world-unity which includes love and form. For love begins in breathing and with breathing mounts to immortality. Down there the peasants were driving, sleepy-headed, heads nodding they traveled on vegetable-carts piled high with cabbage-heads and lettuce-heads, and when one of them let his chin drop as far down as his chest he grunted just as a beast does in its sleep. Some elements of the plant and the animal are contributed to human sleep, and in death the countenance of a peasant seems like stiffened clay. Coming out of the fateless, leading into the fateless, with hardly anything assigned to chance, the peasant’s path runs on the very brink of destiny and on the brink of sleep. Should his prayer, delivered from chance, be answered, then earth, plant and beast are without fate for him; and though he sees the stars only when he goes to market or when he must attend a cow, calving by night, and though he immediately falls back into the dreamless-light sleepy progress of his nights and days, he remains lovingly bound to that nature which is beyond fate, a nature that he lets run through his fingers as smooth, golden wheat, that he touches with softly stroking hand on the hide of an animal, that he tests, crumbling it through his fingers as fertile ground, so very lovingly, so very knowingly — oh ground, beast and fruit so well grasped—that he himself shall be grasped, held and hidden in the knowing-loving hand, peacefully held in it, the hand that shuts and opens itself around him in the passing of the years and days, he mingled with them, mingled in their tides, mingled with their restful warmth, mingled with the knowledge of their future chill, from which he will one day glide crumblingly into the fateless, sleepy womb of his beginning, the farmer dying into the earth; only his breath, the unearthly having become free and rid of its fetters, mounting into that which is beyond, into the invisible with its voices, into the divine: down there the peasants were driving, driving past and away, one cart after the other, on each of which crouched someone, sleeping, head-wagging, snoring, with hardly a fate, hardly a chance, every one in his creaturely cycle of night; so they traveled, old or young, full-bearded, stubble-cheeked, smooth-faced; so they drove on as their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had driven, embodied in the vast repose of their security, peacefully embodied in the vast tides holding them, driving on in the tranquility of their fate-quelling patience, driving asleep, unmindful of the voice that floated above them, the voice of their obscure yearning, yes even, it may be, of their conviction, but which for all that they scarcely heeded, because in the timeless span from generation to generation there is no set time, and it is irrelevant whether the fulfillment be granted to the father, or grandchild, or great-grandchild; confined in activity greater than themselves, and one that they confined in themselves with a careful sort of love, they drove on deliberately through the darkness toward the brink of night, and they dared to sleep. But he, even though once belonging to them, even though once having been likewise a peasant, he lay here cut off from them, cut off from the soil, cut off from plant and beast, still in the grip of fate he lay here, a night-seer: oh, submerged in every human soul there is some function, sheerly unreachable, a function that is greater than himself, greater than his soul, and only he who achieves himself in this final preparation for death discharges his special function, he it is who watches vigilantly over the sleep of the mortal world. Oh homecoming, oh vigilance! Where was it? who kept watch over the world, who guarded those who drove on through the darkness, sleeping? Did the voice do it? was he doing it in having been found worthy of the grace to perceive the voice? Was he now placed on guard? Never! never would he be fit for it, he who was incapable of any help, unwilling for any service, he the mere word-maker who must needs destroy his work because the humane, the round of human action and the human need for help, had meant so little to him that everything which he should have retained and depicted in love was never written down, but simply and uselessly transfigured and magnified to beauty; what presumption to think that under such circumstances he could be ordered to watch, while the veritable watcher, the announcer of the voice had still to come! Was it all nothing but an empty dream? Had the voice in all its reality been actually bestowed upon him? Why then had it been silenced? Where was it? Where was it? He asked, he asked; he called on high for it, and yet as he asked—he asked no more! He kept on seeking for it and yet as he sought—it was no longer a search! For the revelation that he meant not to believe was present everywhere, he perceived it everywhere, perceived it in the groaning of the wagons, in the sluggish pulling-gait of the beasts, in the sleep-creased peasant faces, in their breathing, in the breathing of the darkness, in the breath of the night, and everything—the fateless as well as the fateful, the earthly and the human—had entered into him, had already become part of his own functioning, was his fate also, so much so that whether it remained unwritten, forevermore uncomposed, the promise of not-being-lost had come to be granted, the promise of an infinite further-bestowal in an infinitely further-bestowing love which would remain there through pure beneficence always and forevermore; the night as it vanished was listening, heavy as if with tears. Sleeping or not sleeping, it was all one, beginning and ending the same, fountain and source, root and crown, the flowing tree of the spheres, in the branching of which, fate-assigned and fate-delivered, humanity continues to rest. It existed, it was already in the world, and still it had not come to pass. And bound in with the whole, enslaved by its destiny, and bearing it in his own, he too rested, happily feeling the alliance, feeling it physically with all the fibers of his fever-freed being, happily feeling the coolness that forced him to wrap himself more thoroughly in his coverlet, happily aware of time gliding through the re-opened world of night and bringing coolness as it came, happily aware of the relaxed breathing assimilated into the drizzling breath of darkness issuing from all the fountains of the world, feeling the murmur of the world, feeling the naturalness, while the drizzling sounded cooler and cooler, the stars became cooler, their space became cooler, and cooler that which was audible therein. The wagon-train down there had gradually thinned out, the oncoming and outgoing teams differentiated by their sounds, the distance between them had increased, and finally only a few stragglers were left. And as the pauses between their journey-noises became greater, these were filled more and more distinctly by something like a susurrus that ran widely and silver-clear in and out of the great darkness; it was expected and full of expectation, it was the sea with its drizzling waves, surging in the darkness, although already called out to by the approaching morning. Maybe, oh it may be that he deceived himself—this nearly dismayed him—perhaps his hearing deceived him, perhaps he was ready only for another self-deception, perhaps it was only yearning, an empty yearning of the heart, a yearning for the sea, a yearning for the voice of salvation to surge within the sea-surge, so that he might be able to hold converse with it, a yearning for the voice to become irrefutable by the very strength of the surging, its annunciation irrefutable in the power of the natural—but no, oh no, it was the sea, the sea in its tritonic-immeasurable reality, the revealed activity of the inexpressible and inaudible voice was interwoven with the moon-swept silver rumbling, woven into the endless stour of the billows, woven into the unshackling below and the liberation above, woven into the darkness and into the light-veil with which the darkness had started to extinguish itself, woven into the paling stars, no, still more, more still: filled with the voice, the waters listened, the sea listened, the stars too, the darkness listened and everything that was human listened, the sleeping as well as the wakeful, the universe listened, all listening to themselves in that which fulfilled them. The natural conformed to the natural and there in this mutual conforming love was abiding. Did evil exist? had it been judged? had it been cast out already? The voice woven into the universe did not answer and it was almost as if the answer were not to be brought until daybreak, as if everything had come to be merely a waiting for the daystar, as if beside this nothing more were permissible. Night gathered itself in to its goal, intent on the goal, its blackness stripped of softness; the starry flickering out there played itself out into a greenishness. The color of air stood motionlessly in the darkness, picking object after object out of the shadows, and inch by inch, starting from the window, the room became a room again, the walls again became walls.