eight o’clock
For him the Eastern question relates only to the morning skies . To go on foot and not get muddied , to save his clothes , and allow for the time he may lose in standing under shelter during a shower , are the preoccupations of his mind . The street pavements , the flaggings of the quays and the boulevards , when first laid down , were a boon to him . If , for some extraordinary reason , you happen to be in the streets of Paris at half-past seven or eight o'clock of a winter 's morning , and see through piercing cold or fog or rain a timid , pale young man loom up , cigarless , take notice of his pockets . You will be sure to see the outline of a roll which his mother has given him to stay his stomach between breakfast and dinner . The guilelessness of the supernumerary does not last long . A youth enlightened by gleams by Parisian life soon measures the frightful distance that separates him from the head-clerkship , a distance which no mathematician , neither Archimedes , nor Leibnitz , nor Laplace has ever reckoned , the distance that exists between 0 and the figure 1 .