midnight
Posterity will judge ! ' was the thought with which he consoled himself as he crossed the large courts of the Institute , wrapped in slumber , with unlighted windows and great dark foursquare holes right and left where the staircases came down . He felt his way upstairs and reached his study noiselessly like a thief . Since Paul 's marriage and his quarrel with his son he was in the habit of flinging himself down every night on a bed made up in the study , to escape the interminable midnight discussions in which the wife always comes off victorious , thanks to the never-failing support of her ` nerves ' , and the husband ends by giving way and promising everything for the sake of peace and permission to sleep . Sleep ! Never had he so much felt the need of it as now , at the end of his long day of emotion and fatigue , and the darkness of his study as he entered seemed the beginning of rest -- when in the angle of the window he dimly distinguished a human figure . ` Well , I hope you are satisfied . '