about
three o’clock
Her grief at not being able to save the work which he had left to her care was so overpowering that she fell on her knees and burst into a passion of sobs . Genius had been violated ; it seemed to her as if the world was about to be destroyed in this savage destruction of a whole life of labor . In the study Clotilde was buttoning her dress , holding her child , whom she had been nursing , still in her lap . It was after lunch , about three o'clock on a hot sunny day at the end of August , and through the crevices of the carefully closed shutters only a few scattered sunbeams entered , piercing the drowsy and warm obscurity of the vast apartment . The rest and peace of the Sunday seemed to enter and diffuse itself in the room with the last sounds of the distant vesper bell . Profound silence reigned in the empty house in which the mother and child were to remain alone until dinner time , the servant having asked permission to go see a cousin in the faubourg . For an instant Clotilde looked at her child , now a big boy of three months .