Two o'clock
From the south of France , Reuben thought . The lad 's imagination travelled with difficulty and excitement to the far and alien land whence half his being had sprung . A few scraps of poetry and history recurred to him -- a single tattered volume of ` Monte Cristo , ' which he had lately bought with an odd lot at a sale -- but nothing that suggested to his fancy anything like the peasant farm in the Mont Ventoux , within sight of Arles , where Louise Suveret 's penurious childhood had been actually cradled . Two o'clock struck from the belfry of St. Paul 's , looming there to his left in the great bend of the river . At the sound he shook off all his thoughts . Let him see something of London . He had two hours and a half before his train from Euston .