midnight
`` Two minutes earlier , and you might have paid your stake , '' said one of the vendors of tickets , whose beat was under the portico , where he vociferated this singular cry : `` Twelve hundred francs for forty sous , '' and offered tickets all paid up . By the glimmer of the street lamp and the lights of the cafe de la Rotonde , Joseph examined these tickets to see if , by chance , any of them bore the Descoings 's numbers . He found none , and returned home grieved at having done his best in vain for the old woman , to whom he related his ill-luck . Agathe and her aunt went together to the midnight mass at Saint-Germain-des-Pres . Joseph went to bed . The collation did not take place . Madame Descoings had lost her head ; and in Agathe 's heart was eternal mourning .