midday
`` Wait till she reads the paper ! '' he said to himself ; and he concluded that he should hear from her soon . He heard sooner than he expected . The next morning , before midday , when he was about to give orders for his breakfast to be served , M. de Bellegarde 's card was brought to him . `` She has read the paper and she has passed a bad night , '' said Newman . He instantly admitted his visitor , who came in with the air of the ambassador of a great power meeting the delegate of a barbarous tribe whom an absurd accident had enabled for the moment to be abominably annoying . The ambassador , at all events , had passed a bad night , and his faultlessly careful toilet only threw into relief the frigid rancor in his eyes and the mottled tones of his refined complexion .