M.

No dream [...] is entirely a dream.

She smiled, and after a minute, replied: “I think we ought to be grateful that we have come unharmed out of all our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream.”

She had a black veil over her face, head and neck, a blood-red mouth glowed under the black laces of the mask. Where am I? thought Fridolin. Among lunatics? Or conspirators? Is this a meeting of some religious sect? Can it be that Nachtigall was ordered or paid to bring along some stranger to be the target of their jokes? But everything seemed too serious, too intense, too uncanny for a masquerade prank. A woman’s voice joined the strains of the organ and an Old. Italian sacred aria resounded through the room. They all stood still and listened and Fridolin surrendered himself for a moment to the wondrously swelling melody.

All seemed unreal and phantomlike. He felt as if he had escaped from something, not so much from an adventure, but rather from a melancholy spell the power of which he was trying to break. He felt strangely disinclined to go home.

In every woman I thought I loved it was always you I was looking for.

MAXIM BAEV