Throughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew, reentered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also, without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of reverie, of a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.

He remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely, even until daybreak, had not the clock struck one⁠—the half or quarter hour. It seemed to him that that stroke said to him, “Come on!”