But there was not much conversation; they all behaved very respectably and were very attentive to each other.

Coupeau alone wore a blouse, because as he said one need not stand on ceremony with friends and besides which the blouse was the workman's garb of honor.

The ladies, laced up in their bodices, wore their hair in plaits greasy with pomatum in which the daylight was reflected; whilst the gentlemen, sitting at a distance from the table, swelled out their chests and kept their elbows wide apart for fear of staining their frock coats.
Ah! thunder! What a hole they were making in the stewed veal! If they spoke little, they were chewing in earnest.

The salad-bowl was becoming emptier and emptier with a spoon stuck in the midst of the thick sauce--a good yellow sauce which quivered like a jelly.

They fished pieces of veal out of it and seemed as though they would never come to the end; the salad-bowl journeyed from hand to hand and faces bent over it as forks picked out the mushrooms.