midnight
Now there was no need to think of this . The great dome of the Milan Cathedral showed on the horizon that he was not thirty miles from the Austrian headquarters , while all around and about him vouched for perfect quiet and tranquillity . Tempted by a bright moonlight and the delicious freshness of the night , he determined to push on as far as Lecco , where he could halt for the day , and by another night-march reach Milan . Descending slowly , they gained the plain before midnight , and now found themselves on that narrow strip of road which , escarped from the rock , tracks the margin of the lake for miles . Here Frank learned from a peasant that Lecco was much too distant to reach before daybreak , and determined to halt at Varenna , only a few miles off . This man was the only one they had come up with for several hours , and both Frank and Ravitzky remarked the alarm and terror he exhibited as he suddenly found himself in the midst of them . `` Our cloth here , '' said the cadet , bitterly , `` is so allied to thoughts of tyranny and cruelty , one is not to wonder at the terror of that poor peasant . ''