eight o'clock
I remember the scene well . Half a dozen of the men were standing in one corner of the room , smoking , drinking beer , and laughing over some not very brilliant joke ; we three were a little apart . Courvoisier , stately and imposing-looking , and with that fine manner of his , politely answering his interrogator , a small , sharp-featured man , who looked up to him and rattled complacently away , while I sat upon the table among the fiddle-cases and beer-glasses , my foot on a chair , my chin in my hand , feeling my cheeks glow , and a strange sense of dizziness and weakness all over me , a lightness in my head which I could not understand . It had quite escaped me that I had neither eaten nor drunk since my breakfast at eight o'clock , on a cup of coffee and dry _ Brödchen _ , and it was now twelve hours later . The pause was not a long one , and we returned to our places . But `` Tannhauser '' is not a short opera . As time went on my sensations of illness and faintness increased .