three o’clock
The sleep which Mora craved for so insistently -- the lethargy , to be more accurate -- lasted a whole night , and through the next morning also , with uncertain wakings disturbed by terrible sufferings relieved each time by soporifics . No further attempt was made to nurse him to recovery ; they tried only to soothe his last moments , to help him to slip painlessly over that terrible last step . His eyes had opened again during this time , but were already dimmed , fixed in the void on floating shadows , vague forms like those a diver sees quivering in the uncertain light under water . In the afternoon of the Thursday , towards three o'clock , he regained complete consciousness , and recognising Monpavon , Cardailhac , and two or three other intimate friends , he smiled to them , and betrayed in a sentence his only anxiety : `` What do they say about it in Paris ? '' They said many things about it , different and contradictory ; but very certainly he was the only subject of conversation , and the news spread through the town since the morning , that Mora was at his last breath , agitated the streets , the drawing-rooms , the cafes , the workshops , revived the question of the political situation in newspaper offices and clubs , even in porters ' lodges and on the tops of omnibuses , in every place where the unfolded public newspapers commented on this startling rumour of the day . Mora was the most brilliant incarnation of the Empire . One sees from a distance , not the solid or insecure base of the building , but the gilded and delicate spire , embellished , carved into hollow tracery , added for the satisfaction of the age .