While one coach after another came rolling into the courtyard and a gallery of strange faces crowded at the windows, I ran about the garden like one possessed, spattering my new fine patent leathers with mud, and letting the tears run freely down my cheeks. But that pleasure was cut short. They were calling out for me everywhere. I went into the house. The old man, beside himself with glee at seeing as his guests all his old adversaries, men he had had tilts with, or had insulted, or cheated, was running from one to the other, pressing everybody's hand and swearing eternal friendship. I wanted to say "How do you do" to a couple of friends but I was pushed with a great halloo into a room where they said my bride was awaiting me. There she stood. In white silk--bridal veil like a lighted cloud around her--myrtle wreath black and spiny on her hair--like a crown of thorns. I had to shut my eyes for a second, she was so beautiful. Stretching her hands out toward me she said: "Are you satisfied?" And she looked at me gently with an expression of self-surrender; and her face with the smile it wore seemed like a marble mask. Then I was overcome with happiness and a sense of guilt. I felt like dropping down on my knees and begging to be forgiven for having dared to want her for myself. But I was ashamed to. Her mother was standing behind her and her bridesmaids and other stupid things were also there. I mumbled something that I myself did not understand, and because I did not know what else to say, I walked up and down in front of her and kept buttoning and unbuttoning my gloves. My mother-in-law, who herself did not know what to say, smoothed down the folds of Iolanthe's veil and looked at me from the corner of her eye half reproachfully, half encouragingly. At every turn I ran into a mirror, and--willy-nilly--I had to see myself--my bald forehead, my lobster-coloured cheeks with the heavy folds running into my chin, and the wart under the left corner of my mouth. I saw my collar, which was much too tight--even the widest girthed collar had not been wide enough--and I saw my grubby red neck bulging over my collar all around like a wreath. I saw all that, and at each turn I was shaken with a mixed feeling of madness and honesty, that I ought to cry out to her, "Have pity on yourself! There is time yet. Let me go." You must remember there were no such things as civil weddings at that time yet. I should never have brought myself to the point of saying it even if I had kept walking to and fro for a thousand years. Nevertheless, when the old man came sidling in, watchful as a weasel, to say, "Come along, the pastor is waiting!" I felt injured, as though some deep-laid plan of mine had been thwarted. I offered Iolanthe my arm. The folding doors were pulled open. Faces! Faces! Endless masses of faces! As if glued to one another. And all of them leered at me as if to say: "Hanckel, you are making an ass of yourself."