She came to the Castle every Wednesday with her father, to whom she was apprenticed, a tiny, solemn girl who participated in the task of bleeding the Prince with, although she was only a few years older than Katharina, an astonishing lack of squeamishness. On Tuesdays his nervousness reached its peak, Tuesday nights he never slept a wink but skulked around the Castle observing his sisters sleeping (“My sisters have always been good sleepers, superb sleepers, even Greta, with all her ailments, has never had any trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, whereas I cannot fall asleep or, if I do fall asleep, stay asleep”), and on Wednesdays Ludmila came with her father to bleed him. “My father believes that we share the same form of madness, that mine is merely a heightened version of his, a quantitatively greater madness, yet he is a sleeper!, he is a sleeper, I’ve even seen him fall asleep on his throne while a supplicant is addressing him, he is a sleeper, our madnesses are qualitatively different. He and Greta are superb sleepers, they think they have nothing in common but they have this in common: They sleep, they fall asleep and they actually stay asleep … Wilhelmina, as perhaps you yourself know, is a sleeper, too … Perhaps you’ve even seen her sleep … Whereas my mother had insomnia, like me, Father…” Katharina liked to pretend she had insomnia as well, oftentimes staying up late with Heinrich in his turret, complaining that she couldn’t sleep, but he could tell she was exhausted, she wanted to sleep, “she was only staying up for my sake,” so sooner or later he’d shut his eyes and pretend to sleep and she would fall asleep in a flash. He, however, did not sleep. Only on Wednesdays, after being bled by Ludmila and her father, and then taking a warm bath, was the Prince able to sleep, sometimes continuously for up to three or four or even five hours.

“And so before I knew anything about her, Father,” said Heinrich, peering at the astronomer, who adjusted his hood, he recalled to Leibniz, peering into the telescope, “Ludmila signified sleep. You must not touch her, no touching, this one is not to be touched, I would tell myself, but also: When Ludmila comes, you shall finally get some sleep.”

When some procedure gives an insomniac some sleep, some rest, a respite from perception, a respite from intellection, he cannot resist sentimentalizing that procedure, no matter how straightforwardly scientific that procedure may, in reality, be, Heinrich said. Hence he probably transfigured in his mind Ludmila into an angel who bestowed upon him the blessing of sleep.

In fact, everything about Ludmila seemed as far as possible from the world to which he was accustomed, and to which he had grown—“far worse than merely hostile”—chillingly indifferent. His days of hostility toward the world were behind him. “That was what frightened me.