Midnight
`` That promise has grown rusty since Adam first made it to Eve . '' She eyed him in silence for a second time , deriding his sighs with a smile : then `` There is a rhyme in my mind , '' she cried , `` about moons and lovers , '' and she began to declaim , half muse , half minx , some lines that had pleased her , to tease the importunate stranger . `` Life is unstable , Love may uphold ; Fear goes in sable , Courage in gold . Mystery covers Midnight and noon , Heroes and lovers Cry for the moon . '' As the first words of the verse fell from her lips , Villon 's heart leaped and his eyes brightened for he knew the sound . They were part of the rhymes himself had sent her on that very parchment which had cost him first a dinner and then a drubbing . He had fancied the words and the rhymes when he wrote them , but now they seemed to sound on his ears with the married music of all the falling waters and all the blowing winds of the world .