nine o'clock in the morning
But when three o'clock struck , the bedroom of Madame de Vibray was still flooded with light . She had not left her writing-table since she had read the letter of her bankers , Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil . She wrote on , and on , without intermission . At nine o'clock in the morning , the staff of that great evening paper , _ La Capitale _ , were assembled in the vast editorial room , writing out their copy , in the midst of a perfect hubbub of continual comings and goings , of regular shindies , of perpetual discussions . A stranger entering this room , which among its frequenters went by the name of `` The Wild Beasts ' Cage , '' might easily have thought he was witnessing some thirty schoolboys at play in recreation time , instead of being in the presence of famous journalists celebrated for their reports and articles . Jérôme Fandor had no sooner appeared on the threshold than he was accorded a variety of greetings -- ironical , cordial , fault-finding , sympathetic . But he ignored them all ; for , like most of those who came into the editorial room at this hour , he was preoccupied with one thing only -- where the caprice of his editorial secretary would send him flying for news , in the course of a few minutes ?