midnight
had I known -- if I had known -- I would many times have bartered my poor laurels for the privilege , such as Tinsley and Herrera possess , of having aided him in his monumental researches . It is to the filial piety of Victor Lavalle that we owe the two volumes consecrated to the ground-life of his father , so full of the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth . Once returned from the abysms of the utter North to that little house upon the outskirts of Meudon , it was not the philosopher , the daring observer , the man of iron energy that imposed himself on his family , but a fat and even plaintive jester , a farceur incarnate and kindly , the co-equal of his children , and , it must be written , not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle , who , as she writes five years after the marriage , to her venerable mother , found `` in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the abandon of a large and very untidy boy . '' Here is her letter : `` Xavier returned from I do not know where at midnight , absorbed in calculations on the eternal question of his Aurora -- _ la belle Aurore _ , whom I begin to hate . Instead of anchoring -- I had set out the guide-light above our roof , so he had but to descend and fasten the plane -- he wandered , profoundly distracted , above the town with his anchor down ! Figure to yourself , dear mother , it is the roof of the mayor 's house that the grapnel first engages ! That I do not regret , for the mayor 's wife and I are not sympathetic ; but when Xavier uproots my pet araucaria and bears it across the garden into the conservatory I protest at the top of my voice .