midnight
Another entangled himself in the minute suffrages of science , and poured forth golden words without being understood , qualifying words , harmonising the melodies of the ancient and modern , congregating customs , distilling verbs , alchemising all languages since the Deluge , of the Hebrew , Chaldeans , Egyptians , Greeks , Latins , and of Turnus , the ancient founder of Tours ; and the good man finished by declaring that chaude or chaulde with the exception of the H and the L , came from Cauda , and that there was a tail in the affair , but the ladies only understood the end of it . An old man observed that in this same place was formerly a source of thermal water , of which his great great grandfather had drunk . In short , in less time than it takes a fly to embrace its sweetheart , there had been a pocketful of etymologies , in which the truth of the matter had been less easily found than a louse in the filthy beard of a Capuchin friar . But a man well learned and well informed , through having left his footprint in many monasteries , consumed much midnight oil , and manured his brain with many a volume -- himself more encumbered with pieces , dyptic fragments , boxes , charters , and registers concerning the history of Touraine than is a gleaner with stalks of straw in the month of August -- this man , old , infirm , and gouty , who had been drinking in his corner without saying a word , smiled the smile of a wise man and knitted his brows , the said smile finally resolving itself into a pish ! well articulated , which the Author heard and understood it to be big with an adventure historically good , the delights of which he would be able to unfold in this sweet collection . To be brief , on the morrow this gouty old fellow said to him , `` By your poem , which is called ` The Venial Sin , ' you have forever gained my esteem , because everything therein is true from head to foot -- which I believe to be a precious superabundance in such matters . But doubtless you do not know what became of the Moor placed in religion by the said knight , Bruyn de la Roche-Corbon .