Now, the news having spread, the neighbours began to arrive and asked to see the dead.

In the barber’s shop, on the ground floor, a scene had even taken place on this subject between the wife and the husband while he was shaving a client. The wife, knitting a stocking all the while, murmured: ‘Another one less, and a miser she was, there aren’t many like her. I didn’t like her, it’s true: all the same I must go and see her.’

The husband grunted, soaping the customer’s chin all the while.

‘There’s a queer notion for you! It’s only women who do that sort of thing. It isn’t enough to annoy you in their lifetime, they can’t even leave you in peace once they’re dead.’

But his wife, without being at all disconcerted, went on:

‘I can’t help it: I must go. It’s been on my mind since morning. If I didn’t see her, it seems to me I would think about her all my life. But when I’ve had a good look at her face, I shall be satisfied afterwards.’

The razor-wielder shrugged his shoulders, and confided to the gentleman whose cheeks he was scraping:

‘I ask you now, what ideas they have, those confounded females! It’s not my idea of amusing myself, looking at dead people.’

But his wife had heard him, and she answered without being upset:

‘That’s how it is: that’s how it is.’

Then, putting her knitting on the counter, she climbed to the first floor.

Two neighbours had already come, and were talking about the event with Madame Caravan, who was recounting the details.

They took their way to the death-chamber. The four women entered on tiptoe, sprinkling the sheet one after the other with the salted water, knelt down, made the sign of the cross, mumbling a prayer, then got up, their eyes wide, their mouths half open, looked a long time at the body, while the daughter-in-law of the dead woman, a handkerchief to her face, pretended to sob in despair.

When she turned round to go out, she saw, standing beside the door, Marie Louise and Philip Augustus, both of them in their night-gowns, watching curiously. Then, forgetting her feigned grief, she flung herself at them, her hand raised, shouting in a furious voice:

‘Will you get out of here, you wretched scoundrels, you!’

Going up ten minutes later with another batch of neighbours, having for a second time scattered box- wood over her mother-in-law, prayed, wept, accomplished all her duties, she found her two children come up again behind her. She whacked them again for conscience’ sake; but, the next time, she didn’t take any notice, and each time visitors returned, the two urchins always followed, kneeling down too in a corner, and invariably repeating all that they saw their mother do.

At the beginning of the afternoon the crowd of curious women diminished. Soon nobody came any more. Madame Caravan went in to her own house, and busied herself preparing things for the funeral ceremony, and the dead woman remained alone.

The window of the room was open. A torrid heat came in with puffs of dust; the flames of the four candles flickered round the motionless body; and on the sheet, on the face with its closed eyes, on the two stretched- out hands, little flies climbed, came and went, walking about, ceaselessly inspecting the old woman, waiting their coming hour.