midnight
The eternal river flowed beneath him , clean and steady and strong , between the high embankments . -LRB- He knew by now all about the lock-system that counteracted the ebb and flow of the tides . -RRB- Scarcely a hundred yards away curved out another bridge , and behind that another and another , down into the distance , all outlined in half-lights that shone like stars and flashed back like heaven itself from the smooth-running water beneath . An extraordinary silence lay over all -- the silence of a sleeping city -- though it was scarcely yet midnight , and though the city itself on either side of the river lay white and glowing in the lights that burned everywhere till dawn . At first it quieted him -- this vision of earthly peace , this perfection to which order and civilization had come ; and then , as he regarded it , it enraged him ... . For was not this very vision an embodiment of the force that he hated ? It was this very thing that oppressed and confined his spirit -- this inexorable application of eternal principles to temporal affairs .