four o’clock in the morning
The despised Schwartz stood a while , and then set out after her at a ridiculous three-legged run , but before he had gone ten yards he stopped short , looked after the retreating fair in silence , and then walked off with a dispirited aspect in the opposite direction . So far as I could tell , my shadowy enemy with the axe had taken himself away for good and all , but I was so fearful of recalling him that I kept altogether idle , and in other respects nursed and coddled myself with a constant assiduity . But it is a hard thing for a man who has accustomed himself to constant mental employment to go without it , and in the absence of pens , ink , and paper , books and journals , the procession bade fair to be a perfect godsend . Even when the inhabitants of the village took to rising at four o'clock in the morning , and fanfaronaded with ill-blown bugles , and flaring torches , and a dreadful untiring drum about the street , I forbore to grumble , and when on Sundays they turned out in a body after mass to see their own military section drilled in the _ Place _ of the Hotel de Ville , one bored valetudinarian welcomed them heartily . The military section had got down uniforms from one of the Brussels theatres , -- busbies and helmets , and the gloriously comic hats of the _ garde civile _ , -- dragoon tunics , hussar jackets , infantry shell-jackets , cavalry stable-jackets , foresters ' boots , dragoon jack-boots , stage piratical boots with wide tops to fit the thigh that drooped about the ankles , -- trousers of every sort , from blue broadcloth , gold-striped , to the homely fustian , -- and a rare show they made . They went fours right or fours left with a fine military jangle , and sometimes went fours right and fours left at the same time , with results disastrous to military order . Then it was good to see and hear the fat Dorn as he caracoled in a field-marshal 's uniform , and barked his orders at the disordered crowd like a field-marshal to the manner born .