"This affair will make a great sensation! The marquis has promised to mention it at court; there's a poet here, who's a newspaper man too, and he tells me that my name will appear in an article of at least a column! My name in an article a column long! The deuce! how popular I shall be! When Destival can give a dinner like mine, I'll agree that he can call himself somebody. Poor creatures! they are dying of envy, and I'm glad of it!" At half-past six the company repaired to the dining-room, where the table was laid with forty covers. Monsieur Destival was seated at the lower end, between a child of six and an old deaf gentleman. He swallowed the affront, with a glance at his wife; and their eyes exchanged a meaning look in which they seemed to promise themselves a sweet revenge. The soup had just been removed, when an uproar, evidently occasioned by people quarrelling, arose in the adjoining room. "What does this mean? Lafleur! Jasmin! Who dares to make a disturbance in my house?" exclaimed Monsieur de la Thomassinière, calling his servants. "Send away all visitors; I am not at home to anyone; if a gold ingot should be brought to me, I wouldn't accept it now." 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?"