four in the afternoon
Even clear-sighted and suspicious persons were misled . The moment seemed propitious for Rabourdin . What could better conduce to the stability of the government than to propose and carry through a reform whose beneficial results were to be so vast ? Never had Rabourdin seemed so anxious and preoccupied as he now did in the mornings as he walked from his house to the ministry , or at half-past four in the afternoon , when he returned . Madame Rabourdin , on her part , disconsolate over her wasted life , weary of secretly working to obtain a few luxuries of dress , never appeared so bitterly discontented as now ; but , like any wife who is really attached to her husband , she considered it unworthy of a superior woman to condescend to the shameful devices by which the wives of some officials eke out the insufficiency of their husband 's salary . This feeling made her refuse all intercourse with Madame Colleville , then very intimate with Francois Keller , whose parties eclipsed those of the rue Duphot . Nevertheless , she mistook the quietude of the political thinker and the preoccupation of the intrepid worker for the apathetic torpor of an official broken down by the dulness of routine , vanquished by that most hateful of all miseries , the mediocrity that simply earns a living ; and she groaned at being married to a man without energy .