Caravan rushed forward, seized her by the hands, embraced her with tears in his eyes, while his wife, who was behind him, repeated in a hypocritical tone of voice:  “Oh, 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 woman, continuing to walk, replied 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 all sat down to an improvised dinner.