It was one of those nights when I just couldn't sleep. The mistral was
raging and kept me awake till morning. Everything creaked on the
windmill, the whistling sails swayed heavily like ship's tackle in the
wind, tiles flew wildly off the roof. The closely packed pines covering
the hillside swayed and rustled far away in the darkness. You could
imagine yourself out at sea....
All this reminded me of the bad spell of insomnia I had three years
ago, when I lived in the _Sanguinaires_ lighthouse overlooking the
entrance to the gulf of Ajaccio on the Corsican coast.