three o'clock in the morning
ALBERT . _ A STORY . _ 1857 . Five rich young men went at three o'clock in the morning to a ball in Petersburg to have a good time . Much champagne was drunk ; a majority of the gentlemen were very young ; the girls were pretty ; a pianist and a fiddler played indefatigably one polka after another ; there was no cease to the noise of conversation and dancing . But there was a sense of awkwardness and constraint ; every one felt somehow or other -- and this is not unusual -- that all was not as it should be . There were several attempts made to make things more lively , but simulated liveliness is much worse than melancholy .