nine o'clock in the evening
But this is how it all happened : at any rate it is the version related some few days later in England to the Prince of Wales by no less a personage than Sir Percy Blakeney ; and who indeed should know better than The Scarlet Pimpernel himself ? Déroulède and Juliette Marny were the last of the batch of prisoners who were tried on that memorable day of Fructidor . There had been such a number of these , that all the covered carts in use for the conveyance of prisoners to and from the Hall of Justice had already been despatched with their weighty human load ; thus it was that only a rough wooden cart , hoodless and rickety , was available , and into this Déroulède and Juliette were ordered to mount . It was now close on nine o'clock in the evening . The streets of Paris , sparsely illuminated here and there with solitary oil lamps swung across from house to house on wires , presented a miserable and squalid appearance . A thin , misty rain had begun to fall , transforming the ill-paved roads into morasses of sticky mud . The Hall of Justice was surrounded by a howling and shrieking mob , who , having imbibed all the stores of brandy in the neighbouring drinking bars , was now waiting outside in the dripping rain for the express purpose of venting its pent-up , spirit-sodden lust of rage against the man whom it had once worshipped , but whom now it hated .