four
o’clock in the morning
His benignant and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the sense of suffocating beneath a large fluffy bolster , and the worst of the matter was that the good gentleman 's placid vanity had an integument whose toughness no sarcastic shaft could pierce . Roderick admitted that in thinking over the tribulations of struggling genius , the danger of dying of over-patronage had never occurred to him . The deterring effect of the episode of the Coliseum was apparently of long continuance ; if Roderick 's nerves had been shaken his hand needed time to recover its steadiness . He cultivated composure upon principles of his own ; by frequenting entertainments from which he returned at four o'clock in the morning , and lapsing into habits which might fairly be called irregular . He had hitherto made few friends among the artistic fraternity ; chiefly because he had taken no trouble about it , and there was in his demeanor an elastic independence of the favor of his fellow-mortals which made social advances on his own part peculiarly necessary . Rowland had told him more than once that he ought to fraternize a trifle more with the other artists , and he had always answered that he had not the smallest objection to fraternizing : let them come ! But they came on rare occasions , and Roderick was not punctilious about returning their visits .