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

The wife, tall, fleshy, with a dropsical stomach which threw her trunk far out behind her, opened wide her astonished eyes, ready to take flight.  The husband, a shoemaker socialist, a little hairy man, the perfect image of a monkey, murmured, quite unconcerned:  “Well, what next?  Is she resurrected?”

As soon as Mdme. Caravan recognized them, she made despairing signs to them, then, speaking aloud, she said:  “Mercy!  How do you mean!...  Look there!  What a happy surprise!”

But Mdme. Braux, dumbfounded, understood nothing; she responded in a low voice:  “It was your dispatch which made us come; we believed it was all over.”

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

Mdme. Braux, in her stupor at seeing the old woman whom they all believed to be dead, dared not even embrace her; and her enormous belly blocked up the passage 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 the one and now on the other, and they were so terrible in their expression 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 woman, stopping in her walk, responded in a husky voice, as though it came from a distance:  “It was syncope.  I heard you all the while.”

An embarrassing silence followed.  They entered the dining-room, and in a few minutes they all sat down to an improvised dinner.

Only M. Braux had retained his self-possession; his gorilla features grinned wickedly, while he let fall some words of double meaning which painfully disconcerted everyone.

But the clock in the hall kept on ticking every second; and Rosalie, lost in astonishment, came to seek out Caravan, who darted a fierce glance at her, as she threw down his serviette.  His brother-in-law even asked him whether it was not one of his days to hold a reception, to which he stammered out, in answer:  “No, I have only been executing a few commissions; nothing more.”

Next, a packet was brought in, which he began to open sadly, and from which dropped out unexpectedly a letter with black borders.  Then, reddening up to the very eyes, he picked up the letter hurriedly, and pushed it into his waistcoat pocket.