three o'clock
`` It had been all carefully planned , Monsieur , '' he told me . `` My man , ` Monsieur du Bois , ' had a traveling-carriage waiting at a little house near the Porte St. Denis , where an old servitor of the family lives . He had passports made out for Madame and Monsieur du Bois from New Orleans , traveling with their negro servant Clotilde , and with a maid Susanne , and a man François . Mademoiselle la Comtesse arranged to try her hunter at three o'clock in the Bois , accompanied by her companion , Henriette -LRB- who in these few weeks has become devotedly attached to the comtesse -RRB- , and by the countryman who had brought her the horse and understood him more thoroughly than a groom from the stables of the duchesse would have done . At the same hour the negro maid of the comtesse strolled out into a quiet street at the rear of the hôtel , where she was met by my man and conducted to the little house near the Porte St. Denis . At a little before four we had all gathered there ; by half-past four the transformation had been made and we were leaving the house , Madame du Bois and her two maids in the carriage , Monsieur du Bois on the comtesse 's hunter , I on my own horse and leading the one Henriette had ridden . We had arranged to meet Pierre here with fresh horses and provisions , and spend half an hour in changing horses , resting , and supper .