midnight
Naples , Genoa , and Milan , all were filled with tourist mobs . They took a train for Paris , and reaching the city just a week before the end of the German drive they found it worse than Italy . But there Hal had a special pull -- and by the use of those wits of his , not to be downed by refusals , he got passage at last for Laura , himself and his new Italian partner . At midnight , making their way across the panic-stricken city , and at the station struggling through a wild and half crazed multitude of men and women and children , they boarded a train and went rushing westward right along the edge of the storm . To the north the Germans were so close that Laura was sure she could hear the big guns . The train kept stopping to take on troops . At dawn some twenty wounded men came crowding into their very car , bloody and dirty , pale and worn , but gaily smiling at the pain , and saying , `` Ça n'fait rien , madame . ''