ten at night
Roland went to bed and to sleep , leaving Jacques to guard the building . When Roland awoke Michel had returned . He had found out all that his master desired to know . The horseman who had arrived in the night was to leave the next morning , and on the travellers ' register , which every innkeeper was obliged by law to keep in those days , was entered : `` Saturday , 30th Pluviose , _ ten at night _ ; the citizen Valensolle , from Lyons going to Geneva . '' Thus the alibi was prepared ; for the register would prove that the citizen Valensolle had arrived at ten o'clock , and it was impossible that he could have assisted in robbing the mail-coach near the Maison-Blanche at half-past eight and yet have reached the Hotel de la Belle-Alliance at ten . But what impressed Roland the most was that the man he had followed through the night , and whose name and retreat he had just discovered , was none other than the second of Alfred de Barjols , whom he himself had killed in a duel near the fountain of Vaucluse ; and that that second was , in all probability , the man who had played the part of ghost at the Chartreuse of Seillon . So , then , the Companions of Jehu were not mere thieves , but , on the contrary , as rumor said , gentlemen of good family , who , while the noble Bretons were laying down their lives for the royalist cause in the West , were , here in the East , braving the scaffold to send to the combatants the money they took from the government .