one o'clock
M. d'Harville was about thirty years of age , with a fine , manly countenance , whose usual expression was mild and prepossessing , but now contracted , haggard , and livid . He had not changed his dress since the preceding evening ; his throat was bare , his waistcoat thrown open , and on the torn and rumpled cambric of his shirt-front were drops of blood . His rich , dark hair , which generally fell in curls around his face , now hung in tangled wildness over his pale countenance . Wholly buried in the misery of his own thoughts , with folded arms , drooping head , and fixed , bloodshot eyes , M. d'Harville continued to pace his chamber ; then , stopping opposite his fireplace , in which , spite of the almost unendurable severity of the frost of the past night , the fire had been allowed to expire , he took from the marble mantelpiece the following brief note , which he continued to read over and over with the most eager attention by the wan , pale light of the cold glimmer of an early winter morning : `` To-morrow , at one o'clock , your wife has appointed to meet her favoured lover . Go to the Rue du Temple , No. 17 , and you will obtain every requisite confirmation of this intelligence . `` FROM ONE WHO PITIES YOU . '' Whilst reading these words , perused , with such deep anguish and sickness of heart , so many times through the long midnight hours , the blue , cold lips of M. d'Harville appeared convulsively to spell each syllable of this fatal _ billet _ .