midnight
Yet this death was very bitter to him . He wondered with a dull sense of aching impatience why no Bedouin bullet , no Arab saber , had ever found his own life out , and cut his thralls asunder . The evening had just followed on the glow of the day -- evening , more lustrous even than ever , for the houses were all aglitter with endless lines of colored lamps and strings of sparkling illuminations , a very sea of bright-hued fire . The noise , the mirth , the sudden swell of music , the pleasure-seeking crowds -- all that were about him -- served only to make more desolate and more oppressive by their contrast his memories of that life , once gracious , and gifted , and content with the dower of its youth , ruined by a woman , and now slaughtered here , for no avail and with no honor , by a lance-thrust in a midnight skirmish , which had been unrecorded even in the few lines of the gazette that chronicled the war news of Algeria . Passing one of the cafes , a favorite resort of the officers of his own regiment , he saw Cigarette . A sheaf of blue , and white , and scarlet lights flashed with tongues of golden flame over her head , and a great tricolor flag , with the brass eagle above it , was hanging in the still , hot air from the balcony from which she leaned . Her tunic-skirt was full of bonbons and crackers that she was flinging down among the crowd while she sang ; stopping every now and then to exchange some passage of gaulois wit with them that made her hearers scream with laughter , while behind her was a throng of young officers drinking champagne , eating ices , and smoking ; echoing her songs and her satires with enthusiastic voices and stamps of their spurred bootheels .