Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

For a long time, I went to bed early. Sometimes, my candle scarcely out, my eyes would close so quickly that I did not have time to say to myself: 'I'm falling asleep.' And, half an hour later, the thought that it was time to try to sleep would wake me; I wanted to put down the book I thought I still had in my hands and blow out my light; I had not ceased while sleeping to form reflections in what I had just read, but these reflections had taken a rather peculiar turn; it seemed to me that I myself was what the book was talking about: a church, a quarter, the rivalry between Francois I and Charles V.

This belief lived on for a few seconds after my waking; it did not shock my reason but lay heavy like scales on my eyes and kept them from realising that the candlestick was no longer lit. Then it began to grow unintelligible to me... the subject of the book detached itself from me, I was free to apply myself to it or not....

Translated from Frenchby Lydia Davis