nine o'clock
The monstrosity of two beings without affection and without conception of family life opened to the old woman a world of woe as far from her knowledge as the morals of savages may have seemed to the first discoverers who set foot in America . The arrival of her grandmother , the certainty of living with her in comfort soothed Pierrette 's mind as the sleeping draught soothed her body . The old woman watched her darling , kissing her forehead , hair , and hands , as the holy women of old kissed the hands of Jesus when they laid him in the tomb . At nine o'clock that morning Monsieur Martener went to see Monsieur Tiphaine , and related to him the scene between Pierrette and Sylvie , and the tortures of all kinds , moral and physical , to which the Rogrons had subjected their cousin , and the two alarming forms of illness which their cruelty had developed . Monsieur Tiphaine sent for Auffray the notary , one of Pierrette 's own relations on the maternal side . At this particular time the war between the Vinet party and the Tiphaine party was at its height . The scandals which the Rogrons and their adherents were disseminating through the town about the liaison of Madame Tiphaine 's mother with the banker du Tillet , and the bankruptcy of her father -LRB- a forger , they said -RRB- , were all the more exasperating to the Tiphaines because these things were malicious truths , not libels .