four o’clock
But the harm was done , and , although consumed with anxiety lest he had lost a rare chance , he would have cut off a leg sooner than yield to his impulse to go to her one minute before the hour he had fixed . The information he obtained about her in the quarter was rather contradictory . Some said his client was a saint ; otherwise declared her to be a sly creature ; but , on the whole , nothing was said against her morality that deterred la Peyrade from taking the piece of luck she had offered him . When he met her at four o'clock he found her in the same mind . With the money in his pocket he went to dine with Cerizet and Dutocq at the Rocher de Cancale ; and it is to the various emotions he had passed through during the day that we must attribute the sharp and ill-considered manner in which he conducted his rupture with his two associates . This behavior was neither that of his natural disposition nor of his acquired temperament ; but the money that was burning in his pockets had slightly intoxicated him ; its very touch had conveyed to him an excitement and an impatience for emancipation of which he was not wholly master . He flung Cerizet over in the matter of the lease without so much as consulting Brigitte ; and yet , he had not had the full courage of his duplicity ; for he had laid to the charge of the old woman a refusal which was merely the act of his own will , prompted by bitter recollections of his fruitless struggles with the man who had so long oppressed him .