midnight
Even the quaint , flat-arched windows of one pane each , that winked out of the red-tiled roofs like sleepy eyes , seemed to leer drunkenly at him as they scudded by . Ronald Wyde 's account of those days in Dresden was vague and misty . He crept along the bustling streets of that sombre , gray city , that seemed to look more natural by cloud-light than in the full sunshine , feeling continually within him a struggle between the two incompatible natures now so strangely blended . Each day he kept up the contest manfully , passing by the countless beer-cellars and drinking-booths with an assumption of firmness and resolution that oozed slowly away toward nightfall , when the animal body of the late Hans Kraut would contrive to get the better of the animating principle of Ronald Wyde ; the refined nature would yield to the toper 's brute-craving , with an awful sense of its deep degradation in so succumbing , and , before midnight , Hans was gloriously drunk , to Ronald 's intense grief . Time passed somehow . He had memories of sunny lounges on the Bruhl ` sche Terrace , looking on the turbid flow of the eddied Elbe , and watching the little steamboats that buzzed up and down the city 's flanks , settling now and then , like gad-flies , to drain it of a few drops of its human life . Well-known friends , whose hands he had grasped not a week before , passed him unheedingly ; all save one , who eyed him for a moment , said `` Poor devil ! ''