nearly four o’clock
Here , alone , were his great soul and his high intrinsic worth appreciated ; here he could give himself up , for a few brief months , the last of his life , to the joys of fatherhood , -- pleasures into which he flung himself with the frenzy that a sense of his coming and dreadful death impressed on all his actions . In the afternoon of the day succeeding the night-scene we have just described , Marie Touchet was finishing her toilet in the oratory , which was the boudoir of those days . She was arranging the long curls of her beautiful black hair , blending them with the velvet of a new coif , and gazing intently into her mirror . `` It is nearly four o'clock ; that interminable council must surely be over , '' she thought to herself . `` Jacob has returned from the Louvre ; he says that everybody he saw was excited about the number of the councillors summoned and the length of the session . What can have happened ? Is it some misfortune ?