ten o'clock
Chauvelin made no further remark . He was obviously too excited to speak . Pushing past Hebert and the men of the Surete who stood about the dark and narrow passages of the depot , he sought the Commissary of the Section in the latter 's office . It was now close upon ten o'clock . The citizen Commissary Cuisinier had finished his work for the day and was preparing to go home and to bed . He was a family man , had been a respectable bourgeois in his day , and though he was a rank opportunist and had sacrificed not only his political convictions but also his conscience to the exigencies of the time , he still nourished in his innermost heart a secret contempt for the revolutionary brigands who ruled over France at this hour . To any other man than citizen Chauvelin , the citizen Commissary would , no doubt , have given a curt refusal to a request to see a prisoner at this late hour of the evening .