After the banquet and all the festivities had ceased, and everyone had gone home across the fields, so that the great hall lay abandoned and dark, just filled with the low light of smouldering embers and the smell of old candle wax.... The banquet had seemed to end with no conclusion, nothing gained. The room had become stuffy even for its size, the awkward schoolkids had pressed in upon one another, goading each other on, embarassed and sopascrubbed. Crowds of rich relatives had arrived with stiff propriety, and spoilt the moods of the young lovers.
Crowded in at the corner of the table, M. hunched his shoulders, with no appetite. He had gazed at the princess with her red cheeks burning in the candle-light, he had seen her awkwardness and embarassment, her cool grace in spite of it all, and it attracted him. He was troubled by his sickly-faced relatives and the stuffiness of the great hall, nauseated by the gaudy colours and the strong food, the restrained, school-classroom atmosphere in which nobody knew quite how to behave, yet everyone was afraid to show it.