two o’clock in the morning
Passers-by stopped to gaze at the bills , the vilest remarks were heard , and Mathieu remembered that the Seguins and Santerre were inside the house , laughing at the piece , which was of so filthy a nature that the spectators at the dress rehearsal , though they were by no means over-nice in such matters , had expressed their disgust by almost wrecking the auditorium . And while the Seguins were gloating over this horror , yonder , at their house in the Avenue d'Antin , Celeste had just put the children , Gaston and Lucie , to bed , and had then hastily returned to the kitchen , where a friend , Madame Menoux , who kept a little haberdasher 's shop in the neighborhood , awaited her . Gaston , having been given some wine to drink , was already asleep ; but Lucie , who again felt sick , lay shivering in her bed , not daring to call Celeste , lest the servant , who did not like to be disturbed , should ill-treat her . And , at two o'clock in the morning , after offering Santerre an oyster supper at a night restaurant , the Seguins would come home , their minds unhinged by the imbecile literature and art to which they had taken for fashion 's sake , vitiated yet more by the ignoble performance they had witnessed , and the base society they had elbowed at supper . They seemed to typify vice for vice 's sake , elegant vice and pessimism as a principle . Indeed , when Mathieu tried to sum up his day , he found vice on every side , in each of the spheres with which he had come in contact . And now the examples he had witnessed filled him no longer with mere surprise ; they disturbed him , they shook his beliefs , they made him doubt whether his notions of life , duty , and happiness might not after all be inaccurate .