About midnight
Now , as a sign of this healthy state of body and mind , and his healthier resolve to return to the world , to live opposite his friend the Hermit on the other antipode of life , and furthermore , as a relief from the exhausting tortuosities of thought in the last Chapter , we give here a piece of description notably symbolical . * * * * * `` I slept very early last night ; the lights in the chapel of the abbey were still flickering , and the monks were chanting the complines . The mellow music of a drizzle seemed to respond sombrely to the melancholy echo of the choir . About midnight the rain beat heavily on the pine roof of the forest , and the thunder must have struck very near , between me and the monks . But rising very early this morning to commune for the last time with the pensive silence of dawn in the pines , I am greeted , as I peep out of my booth , by a knot of ogling stars . But where is the opaque breath of the storm , where are the clouds ? None seem to hang on the horizon , and the sky is as limpid and clear as the dawn of a new life .