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 door bell kept ringing every second, and Rosalie, distracted, came to call Caravan, who rushed out, throwing down his napkin.  His brother-in-law even asked him whether it was not one of his reception days, to which he stammered out in answer:  “No, only a few packages; nothing more.”

A parcel was brought in, which he began to open carelessly, and the mourning announcements with black borders appeared unexpectedly.  Reddening up to the very eyes, he closed the package hurriedly and pushed it under his waistcoat.

His mother had not seen it!  She was looking intently at her clock which stood on the mantelpiece, and the embarrassment increased in midst of a dead silence.  Turning her wrinkled face towards her daughter, the old woman, in whose eyes gleamed malice, said:  “On Monday you must take me away from here, so that I can see your little girl.  I want so much to see her.”  Madame Braux, her features all beaming, exclaimed:  “Yes, mother, that I will,” while Madame Caravan, the younger, who had turned pale, was ready to faint with annoyance.  The two men, however, gradually drifted into conversation and soon became embroiled in a political discussion.  Braux maintained the most revolutionary and communistic doctrines, his eyes glowing, and gesticulating and throwing about his arms.  “Property, sir,” he said, “is a robbery perpetrated on the working classes; the land is the common property of every man; hereditary rights are an infamy and a disgrace.”  But here he suddenly stopped, looking as if he had just said something foolish, then added in softer tones:  “But this is not the proper moment to discuss such things.”

The door was opened and Dr. Chenet appeared.  For a moment he seemed bewildered, but regaining his usual smirking expression of countenance, he jauntily approached the old woman and said:  “Aha! mamma; you are better to-day.  Oh!  I never had any doubt but you would come round again; in fact, I said to myself as I was mounting the staircase, ’I have an idea that I shall find the old lady on her feet once more’;” and as he patted her gently on the back:  “Ah! she is as solid as the Pont-Neuf, she will bury us all; see if she does not.”

He sat down, accepted the coffee that was offered him, and soon began to join in the conversation of the two men, backing up Braux, for he himself had been mixed up in the Commune.

The old woman, now feeling herself fatigued, wished to retire.  Caravan rushed forward.  She looked him steadily in the eye and said:  “You, you must carry my clock and chest of drawers upstairs again without a moment’s delay.”  “Yes, mamma,” he replied, gasping; “yes, I will do so.”  The old woman then took the arm of her daughter and withdrew from the room.  The two Caravans remained astounded, silent, plunged in the deepest despair, while Braux rubbed his hands and sipped his coffee gleefully.