He repeated in a lower tone:
“Jean!”
The two women looked at them without understanding.
He then said for the third time, sobbing as he did so:
“Jean!”
The man stooped down, with his face close to the old man's, and as a memory of his childhood dawned on him he replied:
“Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne!”
He had forgotten everything, his father's surname and the name of his native place, but he always remembered those two words that he had so often repeated: “Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne.”
He sank to the floor, his face on the old man's knees, and he wept, kissing now his father and then his mother, while they were almost breathless from intense joy.
The two ladies also wept, understanding as they did that some great happiness had come to pass.