midnight
The tiresome routine of my daily life , its dull , unvarying monotony , began to wear into my soul , and I ceased either to think over the past or speculate on the future , but would sit for hours long in a moody revery , actually unconscious of everything . Sometimes I would make an effort to throw off this despondency , and try , by recollection of the active energy of my own nature , to stir up myself to an effort of one kind or other ; but the unbroken stillness , the vast motionless solitude around me , the companionless isolation in which I lived , would resume their influence , and with a weary sigh I would resign myself to a hopelessness that left no wish in the heart save for a speedy death . Even castle-building -- the last resource of imprisonment -- ceased to interest . Life had also resolved itself into a successsion of dreary images , of which the voiceless prairie , the monotonous water-wheel , the darkened path of my midnight patrol , were the chief ; and I felt myself sinking day by day , hour by hour , into that resistless apathy through which no ray of hope ever pierces . At last I ceased even to pluck the flowers for the Señhora 's window . I deemed any exertion which might be avoided , needless , and taxed my ingenuity to find out contrivances to escape my daily toil . The garden I neglected utterly ; and in the wild luxuriance of the soil the rank weeds soon effaced every sign of former culture .