midnight
I have had men among my Zephyrs -- and they were the wildest insubordinates too -- that would have ruled the world ! I have had more wit , more address , more genius , more devotion , in some headlong scamp of a loustic than all the courts and cabinets would furnish . Such lives , such lives , too , morbleu ! '' And he drained his absinthe thoughtfully , musing on the marvelous vicissitudes of war , and on the patrician blood , the wasted wit , the Beaumarchais talent , the Mirabeau power , the adventures like a page of fairy tale , the brains whose strength could have guided a scepter , which he had found and known , hidden under the rough uniform of a Zephyr ; buried beneath the canvas shirt of a Roumi ; lost forever in the wild , lawless escapades of rebellious insubordinates , who closed their days in the stifling darkness of the dungeons of Beylick , or in some obscure skirmish , some midnight vedette , where an Arab flissa severed the cord of the warped life , and the death was unhonored by even a line in the Gazettes du Jour . `` Faith ! '' laughed Chanrellon , regardless of the General 's observation , `` if we all published our memoirs , the world would have a droll book . Dumas and Terrail would be beat out of the field .