midnight
So oppressive were these obligations that many of the peasants , forsaking their farms , enrolled themselves in the mendicant orders , thus actually strengthening the hand of their oppressors . Of legislative redress there was no hope , and the Duke was inaccessible to all but his favourites . The previous year , as Odo learned , eight hundred poor labourers , exasperated by want , had petitioned his Highness to relieve them of the corvee ; but though they had raised fifteen hundred scudi to bribe the court official who was to present their address , no reply had ever been received . In the city itself , the monopoly of corn and tobacco weighed heavily on the merchants , and the strict censorship of the press made the open ventilation of wrongs impossible , while the Duke 's sbirri and the agents of the Holy Office could drag a man 's thoughts from his bosom and search his midnight dreams . The Church party , in the interest of their order , fostered the Duke 's fears of sedition and branded every innovator as an atheist ; the Holy Office having even cast grave doubts on the orthodoxy of a nobleman who had tried to introduce the English system of ploughing on his estates . It was evident to Odo that the secret hopes of the reformers centred in him , and the consciousness of their belief was sweeter than love in his bosom . It diverted him from the follies of his class , fixed his thoughts at an age when they are apt to range , and thus slowly shaped and tempered him for high uses .