the
hour of four o’clock
The stairs were caked with a layer of mud , hard or soft according to the state of the atmosphere , and were covered with filth . Each landing of this noisome stairway bore the names of the occupants in gilt letters on a metal plate , painted red and varnished , to which were attached specimens of their craft . As a rule , the doors stood open and gave to view queer combinations of the domestic household and the manufacturing operations . Strange cries and grunts issued therefrom , with songs and whistles and hisses that recalled the hour of four o'clock in the Jardin des Plantes . On the first floor , in an evil-smelling lair , the handsomest braces to be found in the _ article-Paris _ were made . On the second floor , the elegant boxes which adorn the shop-windows of the boulevards and the Palais-Royal at the beginning of the new year were manufactured , in the midst of the vilest filth . Gigonnet eventually died , worth eighteen hundred thousand francs , on a third floor of this house , from which no consideration could move him ; though his niece , Madame Saillard , offered to give him an appartement in a hotel in the Place Royalle .