midnight
The parchment is then withdrawn , and the tobacco remains behind in its place ; the little bunch of threads which protrudes at each end is cut off with sharp scissors and the cigarette is finished . The Count , on the afternoon of the day on which this story opens , was sitting before his little black table in his usual attitude , his head stooping slightly forward , his elbows supported on each side of him , his long fingers moving quickly and skilfully , his greyish blue eyes fixed intently on his work . At five o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday , the sixth of May , in the present year of grace one thousand eight hundred and ninety , the Count was rapidly approaching the two-thousandth cigarette of that day 's work . Two thousand in a day was his limit ; and though he boasted that he could make three thousand between dawn and midnight , if absolutely necessary , yet he confessed that among the last five hundred a few might be found in which the leaves would be too tightly rolled or too loosely packed . Up to his limit , however , he was to be relied upon , and not one of his hundred score of cigarettes would be found to differ in weight from another by a single grain . It is perhaps time to describe the outward appearance of the busy worker , out of whose life the events of some six-and-thirty hours furnish the subject of this little tale . The Count is thirty years old , but might be thought older , for there are grey streaks in his smooth black hair , and there is a grey tone in the complexion of his tired face .