midnight
Recovering , somehow , she traveled . On those journeys every possible hardship was neutralized by wealth . Yet even for her the sea could not always be calm , or the skies of the Midi and the Riviera blue . In Venice , at midnight , the soft , hoarse cries of the gondoliers made her toss fretfully on her canopied bed . In Switzerland , as dawn flushed the snow peaks , awakened by the virile voices of the guides , she started up from her pillow in a daze of resentment and perverse antipathy . She calmed herself by listening to the sermons of swamis in yellow robes , and by sitting in cathedrals with her eyes fixed upon the splendor of the altar . Wherever they traveled , her husband went about inquiring for new physicians -- `` specialists in neurasthenia . ''