eight o’clock in the evening
Since early morning Gaudissart and Popinot , helped by a journeyman whose services the commercial traveller had invoked , were busily employed in stretching a fifteen-sous paper on the walls of these horrible rooms , the workman pasting the lengths . A collegian 's mattress on a bedstead of red wood , a shabby night-stand , an old-fashioned bureau , one table , two armchairs , and six common chairs , the gift of Popinot 's uncle the judge , made up the furniture . Gaudissart had decked the chimney-piece with a frame in which was a mirror much defaced , and bought at a bargain . Towards eight o'clock in the evening the two friends , seated before the fireplace where a fagot of wood was blazing , were about to attack the remains of their breakfast . `` Down with the cold mutton ! '' cried Gaudissart , suddenly , `` it is not worthy of such a housewarming . '' `` But , '' said Popinot , showing his solitary coin of twenty francs , which he was keeping to pay for the prospectus , `` I -- '' `` I -- '' cried Gaudissart , sticking a forty-franc piece in his own eye .