what a blessing! oh, what a blessing!"

But the old woman, without being at all moved, without even appearing to
understand, rigid as a statue, and with glazed eyes, simply asked: "Will
dinner soon be ready?"

He stammered out, not knowing what he said:

"Oh, yes, mother, we have been waiting for you."

And with an alacrity unusual in him, he took her arm, while Madame
Caravan, the younger, seized the candle and lighted them downstairs,
walking backwards in front of them, step by step, just as she had done
the previous night for her husband, who was carrying the marble.

On reaching the first floor, she almost ran against people who were
ascending the stairs. It was the Charenton family, Madame Braux, followed
by her husband.

The wife, tall and stout, with a prominent stomach, opened wide her
terrified eyes and was ready to make her escape. The husband, a socialist
shoemaker, a little hairy man, the perfect image of a monkey, murmured
quite unconcerned: "Well, what next? Is she resurrected?"

As soon as Madame Caravan recognized them, she made frantic gestures to
them; then, speaking aloud, she said: "Why, here you are! What a pleasant
surprise!"

But Madame Braux, dumfounded, understood nothing. She responded in a low
voice: "It was your telegram that brought us; we thought that all was
over."

Her husband, who was behind her, pinched her to make her keep silent. He
added with a sly laugh, which his thick beard concealed: "It was very
kind of you to invite us here. We set out post haste," which remark
showed the hostility which had for a long time reigned between the
households. Then, just as the old woman reached the last steps, he pushed
forward quickly and rubbed his hairy face against her cheeks, shouting in
her ear, on account of her deafness: "How well you look, mother; sturdy
as usual, hey!"

Madame Braux, in her stupefaction at seeing the old woman alive, whom
they all believed to be dead, dared not even embrace her; and her
enormous bulk blocked up the passageway and hindered the others from
advancing. The old woman, uneasy and suspicious, but without speaking,
looked at everyone around her; and her little gray eyes, piercing and
hard, fixed themselves now on one and now on the other, and they were so
full of meaning that the children became frightened.

Caravan, to explain matters, said: "She has been somewhat ill, but she is
better now; quite well, indeed, are you not, mother?"

Then the good