nine o’clock
To find in the pure love of marriage the excitements of intrigue , to hide her husband behind the curtains of her bed , and say to her adopted father and mother , in case of detection : `` I am the Marquise de Montefiore ! '' -- was to an ignorant and romantic young girl , who for three years past had dreamed of love without dreaming of its dangers , delightful . The door closed on this last evening upon her folly , her happiness , like a veil , which it is useless here to raise . It was nine o'clock ; the merchant and his wife were reading their evening prayers ; suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several horses resounded in the street ; loud and hasty raps echoed from the shop where the servant hurried to open the door , and into that venerable salon rushed a woman , magnificently dressed in spite of the mud upon the wheels of her travelling-carriage , which had just crossed Italy , France , and Spain . It was , of course , the Marana , -- the Marana who , in spite of her thirty-six years , was still in all the glory of her ravishing beauty ; the Marana who , being at that time the mistress of a king , had left Naples , the fetes , the skies of Naples , the climax of her life of luxury , on hearing from her royal lover of the events in Spain and the siege of Tarragona . `` Tarragona ! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken ! ''