midnight
Mr. Badcock -- by this time a pantaloon of considerable promise and not to be sneezed at in senile parts where affection or natural decay required , or at least excused , a broken accent -- threw in his lot with me : and we bent our steps together upon this unique city , where for close upon twelve months I have drawn a respectable salary as Director of Public Festivities to the Sisterhood of the Conventual Body of Santa Chiara . Nor is the post a sinecure ; since these estimable women , though themselves vowed against earthly delights , possess a waterside garden which , periodically -- and especially in the week preceding Lent -- they throw open to the public ; a practice from which they derive unselfish pleasure and a useful advertisement . `` On Thursday last , the Giovedi Grasso , the Abbess had -LRB- in consultation with me -RRB- provided an entertainment which not only attracted the rank and fashion of Venice but -LRB- I will dare to say -RRB- made them forget the exhaustion of the maddest day of carnival with its bull-baiting and battles of _ confetti _ . An hour before midnight all Venice had taken to its gondolas and was being swept , with song and music , towards the Giudecca . The lagoons swam with the reflections of a thousand moving lanterns , and all their streaming ribbons of light converged upon the bridge of Santa Chiara , beyond which , where the gardens descended in stairways of marble to the water , I had lined the banks with coloured lamps . Discreet narrow water-alleys , less flauntingly lit , but with here and there a caged nightingale singing in the boscage , intersected the sisters ' pleasure-grounds ; but the main canal led around an ample stretch of turf in the midst of which my workmen had reared a stage for a masque of my composing , entitled _ The Rape of Helen _ . Badcock , who was to enact the part of Menelaus , had at my request attired himself early , for some few of my nightingales were young birds and not to be depended on , and I had an idea of concealing him in the shrubberies to supply a _ flauto obbligato _ while our guests arrived .