The servants seemed embarrassed, as if they dared not reply. Meanwhile the noise continued, and they could distinguish a woman’s voice crying:
“I will go in! I tell you I’m bound to go in!”
“Have that canaille turned out of doors, Lafleur,” said Monsieur de la Thomassinière angrily.
At that moment the dining-room door was violently thrown open, and a woman of some sixty years, short and stout, with a good-humored face, dressed like an orange-woman, with a round cap on her head, bounced into the room.
“Hoity-toity!” she cried; “it’d be a pretty good one if I couldn’t get into my own son’s house! What a set of donkeys them fellows be! Excuse me, messieurs and mesdames. Where be you, Thomas? Why don’t you come and gimme a kiss, my boy? Don’t you know your old mother?”
The changes of scene at the Opéra are less rapid than those that took place in that dining-room upon Mère Thomas’s entrance. Monsieur de la Thomassinière was stupefied; it was as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt and was unable to move a muscle or utter a word. The resplendent Athalie turned pale, was evidently confused, and glanced at Mère Thomas with an expression indicating that she still doubted the truth of what she heard. On each guest’s face could be read the amazement caused by this unexpected scene, together with a touch of irony and malicious satisfaction, which fell far short, however, of what Destival and his wife felt at that moment.
Mère Thomas, who took no notice of the demeanor of the guests, recognized her son among the persons seated at the table, and ran to him, saying:
“There he is! I know him! That’s him—that’s my Thomas! Oh! it’s him fast enough—with his little mole under the left eye!—You ain’t changed so much, my boy.—Well, why don’t you kiss me? Can’t you move hand or foot?”
As she spoke, the good woman seized her son’s head and kissed him several times. La Thomassinière made no resistance; he acted like a man who did not know where he was, while Athalie cried:
“Mon Dieu! is it possible? Isn’t this a trick she’s playing on us?”