The hall was crowded with the three bourgeois wedding parties: brides all in white, little girls with carefully curled hair, bridesmaids wearing wide sashes, an endless procession of ladies and gentlemen dressed in their best and looking very stylish.
When at length they were called, they almost missed being married altogether.

Bibi-the-Smoker having disappeared.

Boche discovered him outside smoking his pipe.

Well! They were a nice lot inside there to humbug people about like that, just because one hadn't yellow kid gloves to shove under their noses! And the various formalities--the reading of the Code, the different questions to be put, the signing of all the documents--were all got through so rapidly that they looked at each other with an idea that they had been robbed of a good half of the ceremony.

Gervaise, dizzy, her heart full, pressed her handkerchief to her lips.