five in the morning
`` Your brother is in love , then ? '' she asked , betrayed into a movement of curiosity . `` Yes ; my sister Clara , to whom he is as devoted as a mother , wrote to me that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl ; but I have had no further news of the affair . Would you believe that the poor boy used to get up at five in the morning , and went off to settle his business that he might be back by four o'clock in the country where the lady was ? In fact , he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I had just given him . Forgive my chatter , mademoiselle ; I have but just come home from Germany . For a year I have heard no decent French , I have been weaned from French faces , and satiated with Germans , to such a degree that , I believe , in my patriotic mania , I could talk to the chimeras on a French candlestick .