midnight
Search to the very depth of every political imbroglio , -- dig out the secret reason of every war that ever was begun or ended in the world , -- and there we shall find the love or the hate of a woman at the very core of the business ! Some such secrets history knows , and has chronicled , -- and some will never be known , -- but up to the present there is not even a religion in the world where a Woman is not made the beginning of a God ! '' He smiled somewhat grimly at his own fanciful musings , and then , shutting the window , retired . The house was soon buried in profound silence and darkness , and over the city tuneful bells rang the half-hour after midnight . Four miles distant from the ` quarter of the poor , ' and high above the clustering houses of the whole magnificent metropolis , the Royal palace towered whitely on its proud eminence in the glimmer of the moon , a stately pile of turrets and pinnacles ; and on the battlements the sentries walked , pacing to and fro in regular march , with regular changes , all through the night hours . Half after midnight ! ` All 's well ! '