And, in the middle of the apartment, some forty persons were packed together at the _table d'hote_, which was scarcely eleven yards in length and did not supply proper accommodation for more than thirty people; whilst at the little tables standing against the walls upon either side another forty persons sat close together, hustled by the three waiters each time that they went by.

You had scarcely reached the threshold before you were deafened by the extraordinary uproar, the noise of voices and the clatter of forks and plates; and it seemed, too, as if you were entering a damp oven, for a warm, steamy mist, laden with a suffocating smell of victuals, assailed the face.
Pierre at first failed to distinguish anything, but, when he was installed at the little table--a garden-table which had been brought indoors for the occasion, and on which there was scarcely room for two covers--he felt quite upset, almost sick, in fact, at the sight presented by the _table d'hote_, which his glance now enfiladed from end to end.
People had been eating at it for an hour already, two sets of customers had followed one upon the other, and the covers were strewn about in higgledy-piggledy fashion.

On the cloth were numerous stains of wine and sauce, while there was no symmetry even in the arrangement of the glass fruit-stands, which formed the only decorations of the table.

And one's astonishment increased at sight of the motley mob which was collected there--huge priests, scraggy girls, mothers overflowing with superfluous fat, gentlemen with red faces, and families ranged in rows and displaying all the pitiable, increasing ugliness of successive generations.

All these people were perspiring, greedily swallowing, seated slantwise, lacking room to move their arms, and unable even to use their hands deftly.