midnight
I suppose we would use the grave one if the creature had n't looked alive ? Although he did n't say much , the chauffeur -LRB- or `` shuvvie '' as he scornfully names himself -RRB- knew all about Robert Macaire and Gaspard De Besse -- knew more about them than I , also their escapades on this road over the Esterels , and in the mountain fastnesses , when highwaymen were as fashionable as motor-cars are now . I 'd forgotten that it was this part of the world where they earned their bread and fame ; and was quite thrilled to hear that the ghost of De Besse is supposed to keep on , as a permanent residence , his old shelter cave near the summit of strangely shaped Mont Vinaigre . I 'm sure , though , even if we 'd passed his pitch at midnight instead of midday , he would n't have dared pop out and cry `` Stand and deliver ! '' to a sixty-horsepower Aigle . I almost wished it were night , as we swooped over mountain tops , our eyes plunging down the deep gorges , and dropping with fearful joy over precipices , for the effect would have been more solemn , more mysterious . I could imagine that the fantastically formed rocks which loomed above us or stood ranged far below would have looked by moonlight like statues and busts of Titans , carved to show poor little humanity such creatures as a dead world had known .