midnight
By mid-day , all is alive ; the chimneys smoke , the monster eats ; then he roars , and his thousand paws begin to ramp . Splendid spectacle ! But , O Paris ! he who has not admired your gloomy passages , your gleams and flashes of light , your deep and silent _ cul-de-sacs _ , who has not listened to your murmurings between midnight and two in the morning , knows nothing as yet of your true poesy , nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts . There are a few amateurs who never go their way heedlessly ; who savor their Paris , so to speak ; who know its physiognomy so well that they see every wart , and pimple , and redness . To others , Paris is always that monstrous marvel , that amazing assemblage of activities , of schemes , of thoughts ; the city of a hundred thousand tales , the head of the universe . But to those few , Paris is sad or gay , ugly or beautiful , living or dead ; to them Paris is a creature ; every man , every fraction of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of that great courtesan whose head and heart and fantastic customs they know so well .