Poor Maranne heaves a sigh which tells the whole story of the great sorrow he conceals in the depths of his heart. But what melancholy can endure before the dear face illumined by fair curls and the radiant outlook for the future? The serious questions decided, they can open the door and recall the banished children. In order not to fill those little heads with thoughts beyond their years, they have agreed to say nothing of the prodigious event, to tell them nothing except that they must dress in haste and eat their breakfast even more hurriedly, so that they can pass the afternoon at the Bois, where Maranne will read his play to them, awaiting the hour to go to Suresnes for a fish-dinner at Kontzen's; a long programme of delights in honor of the acceptance of _Revolte_ and of another piece of good news which they shall know later. "Ah! indeed. What can it be?" query the two children with an innocent air. But if you fancy that they do not know what is in the wind, if you think that, when Mademoiselle Elise struck three blows on the ceiling, they believed that she did it for the special purpose of inquiring about the photographing business, you are even more ingenuous than Pere Joyeuse. "Never mind, never mind, mesdemoiselles. Go and dress." Thereupon another refrain begins: "What dress must I wear, Grandmamma? The gray?" "Grandmamma, there's a ribbon gone from my hat." "Grandmamma, my child, I haven't any starched cravat." For ten minutes there is a constant going and coming around the charming Grandmamma, constant appeals to her. Every one needs her, she keeps the keys to everything, distributes the pretty, finely fluted white linen, the embroidered handkerchiefs, the best gloves, all the treasures which, when produced from bandboxes and cupboards and laid out upon the beds, spread throughout a house the sunshiny cheerfulness of Sunday. The laboring men, the people who work with their hands, alone know the joy that comes with the end of each week, consecrated by the custom of a nation. For those people, prisoners throughout the week, the crowded lines of the almanac open at equal intervals in luminous spaces, in refreshing whiffs of air. Sunday, the day that seems so long to worldly people, to the Parisians of the boulevard, whose fixed habits it deranges, and so melancholy to exiles without a family, is the day which constitutes to a multitude of people the only recompense, the only goal of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail makes any difference to them; nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing the door of the deserted workshop or the stuffy little lodging behind them. But when the springtime takes a hand, when a May sun is shining as it is shining this morning and Sunday can array itself in joyous colors, then indeed it is the holiday of holidays.