midnight
And the gravity of his voice and the strangeness of his question forced his hearers , surprised and uneasy , in spite of themselves , to laugh disdainfully . Æsop accepted their laughter composedly . `` Of course not . No one believes in ghosts at noonday , on the crowded street , though perhaps some do at midnight when the world is over-still . But here , to-night , in all this glitter and crowd and noise and color , the king is perturbed and the guards are doubled because of a ghost -- the ghost of a man who has been dead these seventeen years . '' The Baron de la Hunaudaye , bluff old soldier of the brave days of the dawning reign , was interested in the hunchback 's words . `` Of whom do you speak ? ''