the sun of midday
`` _ Eh bien ! _ Remember at all events that I am in affairs , '' said Montaiglon , and the thing was settled . It was only at the dawn , or the gloaming , or in night itself -- and above all in the night -- that the castle of Doom had its tragic aspect . In the sun of midday , as Count Victor convinced himself on the morrow of a night with no alarms , it could be almost cheerful , and from the garden there was sometimes something to be seen with interest of a human kind upon the highway on the shore . A solitary land , but in the happy hours people were passing to and fro between the entrances to the ducal seat and the north . Now and then bands of vagrants from the heights of Glencroe and the high Rest where Wade 's road bent among the clouds would pass with little or no appeal to the hospitality of Doom , whose poverty they knew ; now and then rustics in red hoods , their feet bare upon the gravel , made for the town market , sometimes singing as they went till their womanly voices , even in airs unfamiliar and a language strange and guttural , gave to Count Victor an echo of old mirth in another and a warmer land . Men passed on rough short ponies ; once a chariot with a great caleche roof swung on the rutless road , once a company of red-coat soldiery shot like a gleam of glory across the afternoon , moving to the melody of a fife and drum .