midnight
That will assuredly restore you to yourself . ' For my part , I was so tired of this double life that I at once consented , desiring to ascertain beyond a doubt whether a priest or a gentleman had been the victim of delusion . I had become fully resolved either to kill one of the two men within me for the benefit of the other , or else to kill both , for so terrible an existence could not last long and be endured . The Abbé Sérapion provided himself with a mattock , a lever , and a lantern , and at midnight we wended our way to the cemetery of ------ , the location and place of which were perfectly familiar to him . After having directed the rays of the dark lantern upon the inscriptions of several tombs , we came at last upon a great slab , half concealed by huge weeds and devoured by mosses and parasitic plants , whereupon we deciphered the opening lines of the epitaph : Here lies Clarimonde Who was famed in her life-time As the fairest of women . * * Ici gît Clarimonde Qui fut de son vivant La plus belle du monde . The broken beauty of the lines is unavoidably lost in the translation .