midnight
The man touched his cap in a half-sullen civility , and muttered an assent . `` I once made the same journey myself , in winter , '' resumed the Abbé , `` and I remembered thinking that no man undergoes such real hardship as a courier . Sixteen , seventeen , ay , twenty days and nights of continued exposure to cold and snows , and yet obliged to have all his faculties on full stretch the whole time , to remember every post station , every bridge and ferry , -- the steep mountain passes , where oxen must be hired , -- the frontiers of provinces , where passports are vised . '' `` Ay , and when the lazy officials will keep you standing in the deep snow a full hoar at midnight , while they ring every copeck to see it be good money . '' `` That 's the true and only metal for a coinage , '' said D'Esmonde , as he drew forth a gold Napoleon , and placed it in the other 's hand . `` Take it , my worthy fellow , '' said he ; `` it 's part of a debt I owe to every man who wears the courier 's jacket . Had it not been for one of _ your _ cloth , I 'd have been drowned at the ford of Ostrovitsch . ''