midnight
Yet the consciousness of festivities sometimes obtruded upon his indifference . Now and then on summer evenings , when the wind was from the west , certain brazen discords originating a street or two behind the house would come to advise him that the Circassian girl was on view , or that a convention of lady snake-charmers was in session . Then there would be weeks of winter nights when the frozen macadam in front of the house would ring with a thousand prancing hoofs and rumble for an hour with a steady flow of carriages , and the walls of the great temple of music a few hundred yards to the north would throw back all this clamor , with the added notes of slamming doors and shouted numbers and epic struggles between angry drivers and determined policemen ; sometimes he would extend his smoking stroll far enough to skirt the edge of all this Babel . Then , towards midnight , long after all staid and sensible people were abed , the flood would roll back , faster yet under the quiet moon , louder yet through the frosty air . But he never met the Circassian beauty , and he would have found `` l'Africaine , '' for example , both tedious and unreasonable . To him each of these publics was new , and no less new than alien . Besides , it would have seemed an uncanny thing to be abroad and stirring at midnight .