four o'clock
The great-souled M. de Saint-Cyran , with his vision of Christ restored ; M. Le Maitre , who , at the summit of a brilliant career , turned from the world to meditation and penitence ; Pascal , with his genius and his triumphs , his conflicts of soul and fleshly martyrdom ; Lancelot , the good Lancelot , ideal schoolmaster , who wrote grammar and edited classical books ; the vigorous Arnauld , doctoral rather than saintly , but long-suffering for the faith that was in him ; and all the smaller names -- Walon de Beaupuis , Nicole , Hamon -- spirits of exquisite humility and sweetness -- a perfume rises from the page as one reads about them . But best of all I like M. de Tillemont ; I could have wished for myself even such a life as his ; wrapped in silence and calm , a life of gentle devotion and zealous study . From the age of fourteen , he said , his intellect had occupied itself with but one subject , that of ecclesiastical history . Rising at four o'clock , he read and wrote until half-past nine in the evening , interrupting his work only to say the Offices of the Church , and for a couple of hours ' breathing at mid-day . Few were his absences . When he had to make a journey , he set forth on foot , staff in hand , and lightened the way by singing to himself a psalm or canticle . This man of profound erudition had as pure and simple a heart as ever dwelt in mortal .