about ten o’clock in the morning
At intervals the trumpet-voice of the people rose and drowned the prattle of the yellow drawing-room and the hateful discourses of uncle Antoine . And vulgar , ignoble farce was turned into a great historical drama . On quitting Plassans , the insurgents had taken the road to Orcheres . They expected to reach that town at about ten o'clock in the morning . The road skirts the course of the Viorne , following at some height the windings of the hillocks , below which the torrent flows . On the left , the plain spreads out like an immense green carpet , dotted here and there with grey villages . On the right , the chain of the Garrigues rears its desolate peaks , its plateaux of stones , its huge rusty boulders that look as though they had been reddened by the sun .