nearly nine o'clock
Most likely he is no longer there by this time ; he is probably making his way home through the fields . I assure you that Bazeilles is inaccessible . '' But she did not even listen to him , only increasing her speed , and had now entered the Rue de Menil , her shortest way to the Balan gate . It was nearly nine o'clock , and Sedan no longer wore the forbidding , funereal aspect of the morning , when it awoke to grope and shudder amid the despair and gloom of its black fog . The shadows of the houses were sharply defined upon the pavement in the bright sunlight , the streets were filled with an excited , anxious throng , through which orderlies and staff officers were constantly pushing their way at a gallop . The chief centers of attraction were the straggling soldiers who , even at this early hour of the day , had begun to stream into the city , minus arms and equipments , some of them slightly wounded , others in an extreme condition of nervous excitation , shouting and gesticulating like lunatics . And yet the place would have had very much its every-day aspect , had it not been for the tight-closed shutters of the shops , the lifeless house-fronts , where not a blind was open .