A long time ago I got used to getting to bed early. Sometimes, as soon as the candle went out, my eyes would close so quickly that I didn’t have time to tell myself: “I am falling asleep.” And half an hour later I would wake up thinking that it was time to go to bed; it seemed to me that I was still holding the book and I needed to put it down and turn off the light; in my sleep I continued to think about what I had read, but my thoughts took a rather strange direction: I imagined myself as the things described in the book – the church, the quartet, the rivalry between Francis I and Charles V.
