eight o'clock
Suddenly the speed of these palpitations redoubled , he felt a pain , a nausea that were inexplicable ; a peasant , dreadfully burned , flung at him as he passed : `` Come and ask Charlus where Odette spent the night with her friend . He used to go about with her , and she tells him everything . It was they that started the fire . '' It was his valet , come to awaken him , and saying : -- `` Sir , it is eight o'clock , and the barber is here . I have told him to call again in an hour . '' But these words , as they dived down through the waves of sleep in which Swann was submerged , did not reach his consciousness without undergoing that refraction which turns a ray of light , at the bottom of a bowl of water , into another sun ; just as , a moment earlier , the sound of the door-bell , swelling in the depths of his abyss of sleep into the clangour of an alarum , had engendered the episode of the fire . Meanwhile the scenery of his dream-stage scattered in dust , he opened his eyes , heard for the last time the boom of a wave in the sea , grown very distant .