nine o’clock in the morning
`` God grant it ! '' said Monsieur Fanjat , who himself was affected by the incident . Ever since he had made a close study of insanity , the good man had met with many examples of the prophetic faculty and the gift of second sight , proofs of which are frequently given by alienated minds , and which may also be found , so travellers say , among certain tribes of savages . As the colonel had calculated , Stephanie crossed the fictitious plain of the Beresina at nine o'clock in the morning , when she was awakened by a cannon shot not a hundred yards from the spot where the experiment was to be tried . This was a signal . Hundreds of peasants made a frightful clamor like that on the shore of the river that memorable night , when twenty thousand stragglers were doomed to death or slavery by their own folly . At the cry , at the shot , the countess sprang from the carriage , and ran , with delirious emotion , over the snow to the banks of the river ; she saw the burned bivouacs and the charred remains of the bridge , and the fatal raft , which the men were launching into the icy waters of the Beresina .