midnight
`` Can you do as you like ? '' Michel asked quickly . `` So far as one can when one is indispensable , '' said Lucien modestly . It was almost midnight when they sat down to supper , and the fun grew fast and furious . Talk was less restrained in Lucien 's house than at Matifat 's , for no one suspected that the representatives of the brotherhood and the newspaper writers held divergent opinions . Young intellects , depraved by arguing for either side , now came into conflict with each other , and fearful axioms of the journalistic jurisprudence , then in its infancy , hurtled to and fro . Claude Vignon , upholding the dignity of criticism , inveighed against the tendency of the smaller newspapers , saying that the writers of personalities lowered themselves in the end .