seven o’clock
Heron and his accomplices only cared to save their skins , and the wretched little substitute being really ill , they firmly hoped that he would soon die , when no doubt they would bruit abroad the news of the death of Capet , which would relieve them of further responsibility . That such ideas , such thoughts , such schemes should have engendered in human minds it is almost impossible to conceive , and yet we know from no less important a witness than Madame Simon herself that the child who died in the Temple a few weeks later was a poor little imbecile , a deaf and dumb child brought hither from one of the asylums and left to die in peace . There was nobody but kindly Death to take him out of his misery , for the giant intellect that had planned and carried out the rescue of the uncrowned King of France , and which alone might have had the power to save him too , was being broken on the rack of enforced sleeplessness . That same evening Sir Andrew Ffoulkes , having announced his intention of gleaning further news of Armand , if possible , went out shortly after seven o'clock , promising to be home again about nine . Marguerite , on the other hand , had to make her friend a solemn promise that she would try and eat some supper which the landlady of these miserable apartments had agreed to prepare for her . So far they had been left in peaceful occupation of these squalid lodgings in a tumble-down house on the Quai de la Ferraille , facing the house of Justice , the grim walls of which Marguerite would watch with wide-open dry eyes for as long as the grey wintry light lingered over them . Even now , though the darkness had set in , and snow , falling in close , small flakes , threw a thick white veil over the landscape , she sat at the open window long after Sir Andrew had gone out , watching the few small flicks of light that blinked across from the other side of the river , and which came from the windows of the Chatelet towers .