midnight
-- Will you hand it me from the mantelpiece ? -- I will teach you , as the French have it , _ faire la cuisine ; _ and then , if you please , we will divide , like brethren , the labours of our prison house . '' Julian readily assented to the little man 's friendly proposal , without interposing any doubt as to his continuing an inmate of the same cell . Truth is , that although , upon the whole , he was inclined to regard the whispering voice of the preceding evening as the impression of his own excited fancy , he felt , nevertheless , curiosity to see how a second night was to pass over in the same cell ; and the tone of the invisible intruder , which at midnight had been heard by him with terror , now excited , on recollection , a gentle and not unpleasing species of agitation -- the combined effect of awe , and of awakened curiosity . Days of captivity have little to mark them as they glide away . That which followed the night which we have described afforded no circumstance of note . The dwarf imparted to his youthful companion a volume similar to that which formed his own studies , and which proved to be a tome of one of Scuderi 's now forgotten romances , of which Geoffrey Hudson was a great admirer , and which were then very fashionable both at the French and English Courts ; although they contrive to unite in their immense folios all the improbabilities and absurdities of the old romances of chivalry , without that tone of imagination which pervades them , and all the metaphysical absurdities which Cowley and the poets of the age had heaped upon the passion of love , like so many load of small coal upon a slender fire , which it smothers instead of aiding .