nine
o'clock in the morning
With a throbbing heart he repeated for the third time , `` Good-by ! '' and departed . One would have said that all the carriages in Paris were making a pilgrimage to the Palais de l'Industrie that day . As early as nine o'clock in the morning they began to drive , by way of all streets , avenues , and bridges , toward that hall of the fine arts where all artistic Paris invites all fashionable Paris to be present at the pretended varnishing of three thousand four hundred pictures . A long procession of visitors pressed through the doors , and , disdaining the exhibition of sculpture , hastened upstairs to the picture gallery . Even while mounting the steps they raised their eyes to the canvases displayed on the walls of the staircase , where they hang the special category of decorative painters who have sent canvases of unusual proportions or works that the committee dare not refuse . In the square salon a great crowd surged and rustled .