Eleven o'clock
His conscience shrank from the half-perceived villainies before him ; but his will failed him . What was the use of talking ? He was the slave of an impulse , which was not passion , which had none of the excuse of passion , but represented rather the blind search of a man who , like a child in the dark , recoils in reckless terror from loneliness and the phantoms of his own mind . Eleven o'clock struck . He was busying himself with a cardboard model , on which he had been trying the effect of certain arrangements , when he heard a knock at his door . ' _ Entrez _ ! ' he said , in astonishment .