midnight
They are unaware of the healing virtue which the thing they would not pity at all were it a matter of choice , gains from the compulsion of necessity . All over the house big fires were glowing and blazing . Nothing pleased the marquis worse than the least appearance of stinting the consumption of coal . In the library two huge gratefuls were burning from dawn to midnight -- well for the books anyhow , if their owner seldom showed his face amongst them . There were days during which , except the servant whose duty it was to attend to the fires , not a creature entered the room but Malcolm . To him it was as the cave of Aladdin to the worshipper of Mammon , and yet now he would often sit down indifferent to its hoarded splendours , and gather no jewels . But one morning , as he sat there alone , in an oriel looking seawards , there lay on a table before him a thin folio , containing the chief works of Sir Thomas Brown -- amongst the rest his well known Religio Medici , from which he had just read the following passage : `` When I take a full view and circle of myself , without this reasonable moderatour , and equall piece of justice , Death , I doe conceive my self the most miserablest person extant ; were there not another life that I hoped for , all the vanities of this world should not intreat a moment 's breath from me ; could the Devil work my belief to imagine I could never die , I would not outlive that very thought : I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence , this retaining to the Sun and elements , I can not think this is to be a man , or to live according to the dignity of humanity .