nine o'clock
In the evening after dinner he had often climbed up on the embankment and followed the cracked walls of the ruins . On bright nights one part of the castle was thrown back into shadow , and the other , by contrast , stood forth , washed in silver and blue , as if rubbed with mercurial lusters , above the Sèvre , along whose surface streaks of moonlight darted like the backs of fishes . The silence was overpowering . After nine o'clock not a dog , not a soul . He would return to the poor chamber of the inn , where an old woman , in black , wearing the cornet head-dress her ancestors wore in the sixteenth century , waited with a candle to bar the door as soon as he returned . `` All this , '' said Durtal to himself , `` is the skeleton of a dead keep . To reanimate it we must revisualize the opulent flesh which once covered these bones of sandstone .