five o'clock
But the hardest to bear were the two or three hours between lunch and the toilet . On ordinary occasions she proposed a game of bezique to her old friend ; on others she would read the Figaro , in which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable news interested her . Sometimes she even opened a book , for she fancied herself in literary matters . Her toilet kept her till close on five o'clock , and then only she would wake from her daylong drowse and drive out or receive a whole mob of men at her own house . She would often dine abroad and always go to bed very late , only to rise again on the morrow with the same languor as before and to begin another day , differing in nothing from its predecessor . The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her little Louis at her aunt 's . For a fortnight at a time she forgot all about him , and then would follow an access of maternal love , and she would hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness becoming a good mother .