midnight
One needs to be a man -- a German man and a civil servant -- to be able to experience the full horror of something like this . Mrs Johanna and Miss Helene Löhnefinke , without ever having considered the claims of the moon on people , had sided totally with the moon and were exacting its revenge on him who had despised it . It was not foreseeable how far down they might bring their husband and father -- they had brought him down enough as it was . Late that night , when I was back with my baker , I smoked half a dozen pipes musing over the lessons and experiences of the previous day and decided around midnight to send my son , currently studying mathematics in Göttingen , a copy of the complete works of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter * for his next birthday . * Jean Paul Friedrich Richter -LRB- 1763-1825 -RRB- was born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter and was a German romantic writer of humorous novels and stories . He changed his name to Jean in honour of the French romantic , Jean-Jacques Rousseau .