midnight
For why , in that burgh the watchmen do thunder at each door that is dark , and make the weary wight rise and light . 'T is my son tells me . He is a great voyager , my son Nicholas . '' In further explanation he assured them that previously to that ordinance no city had been worse infested with wolves than Paris ; a troop had boldly assaulted the town in 1420 , and in 1438 they had eaten fourteen persons in a single month between Montmartre and the gate St. Antoine , and that not a winter month even , but September : and as for the dead , which nightly lay in the streets slain in midnight brawls , or assassinated , the wolves had used to devour them , and to grub up the fresh graves in the churchyards and tear out the bodies . Here a thoughtful citizen suggested that probably the wolves had been bridled of late in Paris , not by candle-lights , but owing to the English having been driven out of the kingdom of France . `` For those English be very wolves themselves for fierceness and greediness . What marvel then that under their rule our neighbours of France should be wolf-eaten ? ''