midnight
For the last fifty years I had found not one that would receive my testimony . For when I told them the truth concerning myself , saying as I now say , and knowing the thing for true -- that I was Ahasuerus whom the Word had banished from his home in the regions governed of Death , shutting against him the door of the tomb that he should not go in , every man said I was mad , and would hold with me no manner of communication , more than if I had been possessed with a legion of swine-loving demons . Therefore was I cold at heart , and lonely to the very root of my being . And thus it was with me that midnight as I entered the village among the mountains . -- Now all therein slept , so even that not a dog barked at the sound of my footsteps . But suddenly , and my soul yet quivers with dismay at the remembrance , a yell of horror tore its way from the throat of every sleeper at once , and shot into every cranny of the many-folded mountains , that my soul knocked shaking against the sides of my body , and I also shrieked aloud with the keen terror of the cry . For surely there was no sleeper there , man , woman , or child , who yelled not aloud in an agony of fear .