about midnight
As for him , he was so little concerned about me that , had I fallen , I doubt whether he would have taken the trouble to pick me up . Sometimes , noticing my terror , he would jeer at me , and , to make me still more afraid , set his horse plunging again . Twenty times , in a frenzy of despair , I was on the point of throwing myself off ; but the instinctive love of life prevented me from giving way to the impulse . At last , about midnight , we suddenly stopped before a small pointed gate , and the drawbridge was soon lifted behind us . My grandfather took me , bathed in a cold sweat as I was , and threw me over to a great fellow , lame and horribly ugly , who carried me into the house . This was my Uncle John , and I was at Roche-Mauprat . At that time my grandfather , along with his eight sons , formed the last relic in our province of that race of petty feudal tyrants by which France had been overrun and harassed for so many centuries .