six o'clock
And so he stayed . When the vines were stripped of their clusters , and the ploughed fields stood bare and brown in the autumnal sun -- when the fig trees lost their leaves , and their white branches took on that peculiarly gaunt appearance which characterises them as soon as the wintry winds begin to blow -- a solitary traveller plodded wearily across the Lombardy plains , asking , as he went , for the road that would lead him to the village and monastery of San Stefano . He arrived at his destination on an evening late in November . It was between five and six o'clock when he came to the little , white village , nestling in a cleft of the hills , with the monastery on a slope behind it . There was a background of mountainous country -- green , and grey , and purple -- with solemn , white heights behind , stretching far into the crystal clearness of the sky . As the traveller reached the village he looked up to those white forms , and saw them transfigured in the evening light . The sky behind them changed to rose colour , to purple , violet , even to delicate pale green and golden , and , when the daylight had faded , an afterglow tinged the snowy summit with a roseate flush more tenderly ethereal than the tint of an oleander blossom , as transient as a gleam of April sunshine , or the changing light upon a summer sea .