midnight
-LRB- To him they were cuirassiers ! -RRB- It would have been beneath his dignity to have chased mere hussars ... . By way of climax came the splendid description of how he cut his way through the besieging host . In the dark night , amidst a blinding blackness of midnight snow-storm , he cut his way on horseback through the Austrian foreposts , leaping over trenches and earth-works , with the bullets skimming about his ears right and left . His horse was shot dead beneath him , but ever equal to the occasion , he hastily fastened on his skates , and skated with the rapidity of lightning over the frozen Zsitva and the Csiliz , and two other rivers the names of which I never heard of before . Thus at last he reached the fortress . Every one was enchanted with the narration .