midnight
The dwelling-houses and larger buildings were gray and beautiful with age , and the streets wound in and out among them wonderfully , like a maze . This city lay beside a river or estuary -- though that was something that I did not find out until later , as you will see -- and the newer part of the town extended mainly on a wide , bare street running along a kind of low cliff or embankment , where the basements of the small houses on the water-side went down , below the level of the street , to the shore . But the older part of the town was closely and intricately built , with gabled roofs and heavy carved facades hanging over the narrow stone-paved ways , which here and there led out suddenly into open squares . It was in what appeared to be the largest and most important of these squares that I was standing , a little before midnight . I had left my wife and our little girl in the lodging which we had found , and walked out alone to visit the sleeping town . The night sky was clear , save for a few filmy clouds , which floated over the face of the full moon , obscuring it for an instant , but never completely hiding it -- like veils in a shadow dance . The spire of the great cathedral was silver filigree on the moonlit side , and on the other side , black lace .