ten o’clock
The articles of clothing in the room were blown about , and they gathered up in fragments a little hand mirror which had fallen from a chair . Was this a sign of approaching death , as the women of the faubourg said ? In the evening , after a mournful dinner in the bright dining-room , with its great bouquets of flowers , Pascal said he would retire early . Clotilde was to leave on the following morning by the ten o'clock train , and he feared for her the long journey -- twenty hours of railway traveling . But when he had retired he was unable to sleep . At first he thought it was the wind that kept him awake . The sleeping house was full of cries , voices of entreaty and voices of anger , mingled together , accompanied by endless sobbing .