midnight
He brushes past them , however , without much delaying or particularizing ; a hint , a moment , a glance suffices for the contribution that some event or colloquy is to make to the picture . Note , for example , how unceremoniously , again and again , and with how little thought of disposing a deliberate scene , he drifts into his account of something that Becky said or did ; she begins to talk , you find there is some one else in the room , you find they are in a certain room at a certain hour ; definition emerges unawares in a brooding memory . Briefly , to all appearance quite casually , the little incident shows itself and vanishes ; there is a pause to watch and listen , and then the stream sets forward again , by so much enriched and reinforced . Or in a heightened mood , as in the picture of the midnight flurry and alarm of the great desolate house , when old Pitt Crawley is suddenly struck down , still it is as though Thackeray circled about the thought of the time and place , offering swift and piercing glimpses of it , giving no continuous and dramatic display of a constituted scene . That foreshortening and generalizing , that fusion of detail , that subordination of the instance and the occasion to the broad effect , are the elements of the pictorial art in which Thackeray is so great a master . So long as it is a matter of sketching a train of life in broad free strokes , the poise and swing of his style are beyond praise . And its perfection is all the more notable that it stands in such contrast with the curious drop and uncertainty of his skill , so soon as there is something more , something different to be done .