Midnight
_ Ach , mein Lieber _ ! '' said he once , at midnight , when we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk , `` it is a true sublimity to dwell here . These fringes of lamplight , struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation , some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night , what thinks Bootes of them , as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire ? That stifled hum of Midnight , when Traffic has lain down to rest ; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity , still rolling here and there through distant streets , are bearing her to Halls roofed in , and lighted to the due pitch for her ; and only Vice and Misery , to prowl or to moan like nightbirds , are abroad : that hum , I say , like the stertorous , unquiet slumber of sick Life , is heard in Heaven ! Oh , under that hideous coverlet of vapors , and putrefactions , and unimaginable gases , what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid ! The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men are dying there , men are being born ; men are praying , -- on the other side of a brick partition , men are cursing ; and around them all is the vast , void Night . The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons , or reposes within damask curtains ; Wretchedness cowers into buckle-beds , or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw : in obscure cellars , _ Rouge-et-Noir _ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry Villains ; while Councillors of State sit plotting , and playing their high chess-game , whereof the pawns are Men .