one o'clock
His opaque eyes were quite expressionless , and his face , with its worn features , had retained a loamy tint , a gloomy , russet reflection of the earth . Monseigneur Laurence had really made a politic selection in confiding the organisation and management of the Grotto to those Garaison missionaries , who were so tenacious and covetous , for the most part sons of mountain peasants and passionately attached to the soil . However , the little party now slowly retraced its steps by way of the Plateau de la Merlasse , the broad boulevard which skirts the inclined way on the left hand and leads to the Avenue de la Grotte . It was already past one o'clock , but people were still eating their / dejeuners / from one to the other end of the overflowing town . Many of the fifty thousand pilgrims and sight-seers collected within it had not yet been able to sit down and eat ; and Pierre , who had left the / table d'hote / still crowded , who had just seen the hospitallers squeezing together so gaily at the `` ordinary , '' found more and more tables at each step he took . On all sides people were eating , eating without a pause . Hereabouts , however , in the open air , on either side of the broad road , the hungry ones were humble folk who had rushed upon the tables set up on either footway -- tables formed of a couple of long boards , flanked by two forms , and shaded from the sun by narrow linen awnings .