seven o'clock
Crossing the Place de la Bastille , a man on horseback rode up beside us and gave us good day . He had evidently come in with the country folk and was himself without doubt a small market-gardener , for the loam of the garden was on his rough cowhide boots and his blue smock was such as a countryman wears . I thought at first there was something strangely familiar in his face , and then I remembered I had seen him the evening before at the little country inn , twenty miles out from the city , where we had spent the night . He , like us , must have started at early dawn to reach the city by seven o'clock , very like for the same reason -- to take advantage of the cool of the day ; and like us also , he must have had a very good horse to make that distance in that time . I glanced at his horse as the thought occurred to me , and saw that it was indeed a good horse . Coal-black , except for a white star on his forehead and one white stocking , he was powerfully built , and yet with such an easy stretch of limb as promised speed as well as endurance . I thought it a little strange that a country farmer should own a horse of such points and breeding as this one showed itself to be , and perhaps my thought appeared in my face , for the countryman answered it . ''