the hour of six
Bah ! These would not count . It would be thirty to one , so let the Scarlet Pimpernel look to himself . From the towers of Notre Dame the big bell struck the hour of six , as thirty men in ragged shirts and torn breeches , shivering beneath a cold November drizzle , began slowly to wend their way towards the Rue Berthier . They walked on in silence , not heeding the cold or the rain , but with eyes fixed in the direction of their goal , and nostrils quivering in the evening air with the distant scent of blood . At the top of the Rue Berthier the party halted . On ahead -- some two hundred metres farther -- Yvonne Lebeau 's little figure , with her ragged skirt pulled over her head and her bare feet pattering in the mud , was seen crossing one of those intermittent patches of light formed by occasional flickering street lamps , and then was swallowed up once more by the inky blackness beyond .