midnight
When the house was empty of boarders , or nearly empty -- though at such times the cupboard also was apt to be bare -- there were long hours spent upstairs and surveys of household gear , carried up with difficulty , and reviews of linen and much talk of it , and small meals , taken at the open windows that looked over the Rhone valley and commanded the sunset view . Such times were times of gaiety though not of prosperity , and far from the worst hours of life -- had they but persisted . But in the March of 1601 a great calamity fell on these two . A fire , which consumed several houses near the Corraterie , and flung wide through the streets the rumour that the enemy had entered , struck the bedridden woman -- aroused at midnight by shouts and the glare of flames -- with so dire a terror , not on her own account but on her daughter 's , that she was never the same again . For weeks at a time she appeared to be as of old , save for some increase of weakness and tremulousness . But below the surface the brain was out of poise , and under the least pressure of excitement she betrayed the change in a manner so appalling -- by the loud negation of those beliefs which in saner moments were most dear to her , and especially by a denial of the Providence and goodness of God -- that even her child , even the being who knew her and loved her best , shuddered lest Satan , visible and triumphant , should rise to confront her . Fortunately the fits of this mysterious malady were short as they were appalling , and to the minds of that day , suspicious .