two o’clock
For the last four years they had gone their way like navigators without a goal or a compass . Sitting by the chimney corner , they would talk over their disasters under the old law of _ maximum _ , of their great investments in cloth , of the way they had weathered bankruptcies , and , above all , the famous failure of Lecocq , Monsieur Guillaume 's battle of Marengo . Then , when they had exhausted the tale of lawsuits , they recapitulated the sum total of their most profitable stock-takings , and told each other old stories of the Saint-Denis quarter . At two o'clock old Guillaume went to cast an eye on the business at the Cat and Racket ; on his way back he called at all the shops , formerly the rivals of his own , where the young proprietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into some risky discount , which , as was his wont , he never refused point-blank . Two good Normandy horses were dying of their own fat in the stables of the big house ; Madame Guillaume never used them but to drag her on Sundays to high Mass at the parish church . Three times a week the worthy couple kept open house . By the influence of his son-in-law Sommervieux , Monsieur Guillaume had been named a member of the consulting board for the clothing of the Army .