midnight
The excellent Madame Bernard had been Angela 's governess before the child had been sent to the convent , on the Trinità dei Monti , and whenever she was at home for the holidays , and also during the brief interval between her leaving school and going into society ; and after that , during the winter which preceded Prince Chiaromonte 's death , she had accompanied the motherless girl to concerts and had walked with her almost daily in the mornings . She was one of those thoroughly trustworthy , sound-minded , well-educated Frenchwomen of the middle class of whom many are to be found in the provinces , though the type is rare in Paris ; nearly fifty years of age , she had lived twenty years in Rome , always occupying the same little apartment in a respectable street of Trastevere , where she had a spare room which she was glad to let to any French or English lady of small means who came to Rome for a few months in the winter and spring . Angela sent her maid for Madame Bernard on the day of the catastrophe , since her aunt neither offered to take her in at once nor seemed inclined to suggest any arrangement for the future . The Marchesa did , indeed , take charge of everything in the Palazzo Chiaromonte within an hour of her brother-in-law 's death ; she locked the drawers of his private desk herself , sent for the notary and had the customary seals placed on the doors of the inner apartments ` in the name of the heirs ' ; she spoke with the undertaker and made every arrangement for the customary lying in state of the body during the following night and day ; saw to the erection of the temporary altar at which masses for the dead would be celebrated almost without interruption from midnight to noon by sixteen priests in succession ; gave full instructions to the effect that the men-servants should take their turn of duty in regular watches , day and night , until the funeral ; and finally left the palace , after showing herself to be an exceedingly practical woman . When she went away , she was holding her handkerchief to her eyes with both hands and she forgot her parasol ; but she remembered it as she was just going out by the postern , her carriage being outside because the gates were shut , and she sent her footman back for it and for the little morocco bag in which she carried her handkerchief and card-case . It was a small matter , but the porter , the footman , and the butler upstairs all remembered it afterwards , and the footman himself , while coming down , took the trouble to look into the little wallet , and saw that the card-case was there , but nothing else ; for the Marchesa sometimes carried certain little cigarettes in it , which the man had found particularly good . But to-day there was not even one .