midnight
Yet when bolt and bar had shot behind her , and she had mounted the cold , bare staircase of that day -- when she had heard the dull echoing footsteps of her attendants as they withdrew to their lairs and sleeping - places , and still more when she had crossed the threshold of her chamber , and signed to Madame Carlat and her woman to listen -- it is certain she felt a lack of something . Perhaps the chill that possessed her came of that lack , which she neither defined nor acknowledged . Or possibly it came of the night air , August though it was ; or of sheer nervousness , or of the remembrance of Count Hannibal 's smile . Whatever its origin , she took it to bed with her and long after the house slept round her , long after the crowded quarter of the Halles had begun to heave and the Sorbonne to vomit a black-frocked band , long after the tall houses in the gabled streets , from St. Antoine to Montmartre and from St. Denis on the north to St. Jacques on the south , had burst into rows of twinkling lights -- nay , long after the Quarter of the Louvre alone remained dark , girdled by this strange midnight brightness -- she lay awake . At length she too slept , and dreamed of home and the wide skies of Poitou , and her castle of Vrillac washed day and night by the Biscay tides . `` Tavannes ! '' `` Sire . ''