one hour after midnight
`` To the last letter , '' replied the other . And their two hands met in a grasp of mutual understanding -- two hands already indelibly stained with much innocent blood , more deeply stained now with seventeen past days of inhumanity and miserable treachery to come . What occurred within the inner cell of the Conciergerie prison within the next half-hour of that 16th day of Pluviose in the year II of the Republic is , perhaps , too well known to history to need or bear overfull repetition . Chroniclers intimate with the inner history of those infamous days have told us how the chief agent of the Committee of General Security gave orders one hour after midnight that hot soup , white bread and wine be served to the prisoner , who for close on fourteen days previously had been kept on short rations of black bread and water ; the sergeant in charge of the guard-room watch for the night also received strict orders that that same prisoner was on no account to be disturbed until the hour of six in the morning , when he was to be served with anything in the way of breakfast that he might fancy . All this we know , and also that citizen Heron , having given all necessary orders for the morning 's expedition , returned to the Conciergerie , and found his colleague Chauvelin waiting for him in the guard-room . `` Well ? '' he asked with febrile impatience -- `` the prisoner ? ''