five o’clock
He made his way home along the boulevards , in the same state , physical and mental , as an old woman after a desperate struggle with burglars . As he went he talked to himself in quick spasmodic jerks ; his honor had been wounded , and the pain of it drove him on as a gust of wind whirls away a straw . He found himself at last in the Boulevard du Temple ; how he had come thither he could not tell . It was five o'clock , and , strange to say , he had completely lost his appetite . But if the reader is to understand the revolution which Pons ' unexpected return at that hour was to work in the Rue de Normandie , the promised biography of Mme. Cibot must be given in this place . Any one passing along the Rue de Normandie might be pardoned for thinking that he was in some small provincial town . Grass runs to seed in the street , everybody knows everybody else , and the sight of a stranger is an event .