midnight
he exclaimed . But yet he looked little like a man who wished to dance , save upon a grave . It is a bad thing to call down a crisis in the night-time . A `` scene '' at midnight is a savage enemy of ultimate understanding , and that Devil , called Estrangement , laughs as he observes the objects of his attention in conflict when the midnight candle burns . He should have been seized with a fit of remorse , however , at the sight he saw in the Manor Cartier at midnight of the day when Jean Jacques Barbille had reached his fiftieth year . There is nothing which , for pathos and for tragedy , can compare with a struggle between the young and the old . The Devil of Estrangement when he sees it , may go away and indulge himself in sleep ; for there will be no sleep for those who , one young and the other old , break their hearts on each other 's anvils , when the lights are low and it is long till morning .