two
o’clock
I made an effort ; I wrote a second letter , and carried it myself , for my confidential servant was now gone . The river lay between us . I had to cross Paris ; but at last , within a suitable distance of her house , I caught sight of a messenger ; I charged him to have the note sent up to her at once , and I had the happy idea of driving past her door in a hackney cab to see whether she might not by chance receive the two letters together . At the moment when I arrived it was two o'clock ; the great gate opened to admit a carriage . Whose ? -- That of the stalking-horse ! `` It is fifteen years since -- well , even while I tell the tale , I , the exhausted orator , the Minister dried up by the friction of public business , I still feel a surging in my heart and the hot blood about my diaphragm .