about one in the morning
It is late . I will draw up a little petition myself , with a due allowance of ` inasmuch , ' and go to the Courts myself . '' This scene is typical of the thousand delights which , when we look back on our youth , make us say , `` Those were good times . '' At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert , self-styled , knocked at the door of Maitre Derville , attorney to the Court of First Instance in the Department of the Seine . The porter told him that Monsieur Derville had not yet come in . The old man said he had an appointment , and was shown upstairs to the rooms occupied by the famous lawyer , who , notwithstanding his youth , was considered to have one of the longest heads in Paris . Having rung , the distrustful applicant was not a little astonished at finding the head clerk busily arranging in a convenient order on his master 's dining-room table the papers relating to the cases to be tried on the morrow .