midnight
Conversation , perfumed with seven cigars , at first was as fantastic as a kid let loose , but finally it settled down upon the strategy of the constant war waged in Paris between creditors and debtors . Now , if you will be so good as to recall the history and antecedents of the guests , you will know that in all Paris , you could scarcely find a group of men with more experience in this matter ; the professional men on one hand , and the artists on the other , were something in the position of magistrates and criminals hobnobbing together . A set of Bixiou 's drawings to illustrate life in the debtors ' prison , led the conversation to take this particular turn ; and from debtors ' prisons they went to debts . It was midnight . They had broken up into little knots round the table and before the fire , and gave themselves up to the burlesque fun which is only possible or comprehensible in Paris and in that particular region which is bounded by the Faubourg Montmartre , the Rue Chaussee d'Antin , the upper end of the Rue de Navarin and the line of the boulevards . In ten minutes ' time they had come to an end of all the deep reflections , all the moralizings , small and great , all the bad puns made on a subject already exhausted by Rabelais three hundred and fifty years ago . It was not a little to their credit that the pyrotechnic display was cut short with a final squib from Malaga .