eight o'clock
And now go away , my dear abbe , and do not come back for two hours , for I expect some one whom it would be better you should not meet . '' The abbe , who was prudence itself , did not wait to be told twice , but pressed the chevalier 's hand and left him . Twenty minutes afterward Captain Roquefinette entered . The evening of the same day , which was Sunday , toward eight o'clock , at the moment when a considerable group of men and women , assembled round a street singer who was playing at the same time the cymbals with his knees and the tambourine with his hands , obstructed the entrance to the Rue de Valois , a musketeer and two of the light horse descended a back staircase of the Palais Royal , and advanced toward the Passage du Lycée , which , as every one knows , opened on to that street ; but seeing the crowd which barred the way , the three soldiers stopped and appeared to take council . The result of their deliberation was doubtless that they must take another route , for the musketeer , setting the example of a new maneuver , threaded the Cour des Fontaines , turned the corner of the Rue des Bons Enfants , and walking rapidly -- though he was extremely corpulent -- arrived at No. 22 , which opened as by enchantment at his approach , and closed again on him and his two companions . At the moment when they commenced this little detour , a young man , dressed in a dark coat , wrapped in a mantle of the same color , and wearing a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes , quitted the group which surrounded the singer , singing himself , to the tune of Les Pendus , `` Vingt-quatre , vingt-quatre , vingt-quatre , '' and advancing rapidly toward the Passage du Lycée , arrived at the further end in time to see the three illustrious vagabonds enter the house as we have said . He threw a glance round him , and by the light of one of the three lanterns , which lighted , or rather ought to have lighted , the whole length of the street , he perceived one of those immense coalheavers , with a face the color of soot , so well stereotyped by Greuze , who was resting against one of the posts of the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon , on which he had hung his bag .