midnight
Lightly and cautiously , though his sinews still ached , and his nerves still throbbed with the past strain , he let himself fall , hand over hand , as men go down a rope , along the woodwork to the ground . Once touching earth , off he glided , swiftly and noiselessly , keeping in the shadow of the walls all the length of the streets he took , and shunning every place where any sort of tumult could suggest the neighborhood of those who were out and hunting him down . As it chanced , they had taken to the open country ; he passed on unquestioned , and wound his way to the Kursaal . He remembered that to-night there was a masked ball , at which all the princely and titled world of Baden were present ; to which he would himself have gone after the Russian dinner ; by the look of the stars he saw that it must be midnight or past ; the ball would be now at its height . The dare-devil wildness and the cool quietude that were so intimately and intricately mingled in his nature could alone have prompted and projected such a thought and such an action as suggested themselves to him now ; in the moment of his direst extremity , of his utter hopelessness , of his most imminent peril , he went -- to take a last look at his mistress ! Baden , for aught he knew , might be but one vast network to mesh in and to capture him ; yet he ran the risk with the dauntless temerity that had ever lain underneath the indifferentism and the indolence of his habits . Keeping always in the shadow , and moving slowly , so as to attract no notice from those he passed , he made his way deliberately , straight toward the blaze of light where all the gayety of the town was centered ; he reckoned , and rightly , as it proved , that the rumor of his story , the noise of his pursuit , would not have penetrated here as yet ; his own world would be still in ignorance .