about two o'clock in the morning
`` I begin to understand , '' cried Germain . `` But I was nearly getting in a ` fix , ' for no patrol passed . I might have robbed myself twenty times with the greatest ease and safety . At last , about two o'clock in the morning , I heard the tread of the soldier boys , and then I pushed open the window , jumped into the room , pocketed the silver spoons and some other trifles . Fortunately the lively patrol had heard the smash of the windows , and just as I leaped out of the window they laid hands upon me . They knocked at the door , which the porter opened , they sent for the sergeant of police , who came . The porter told him that the two rooms had been hired that morning by a humpbacked gentleman , with black hair and blue spectacles , whose name was Grégoire .