She arrives and asks for my uncle. Being seven o'clock, the hall-porter
tells her that the captain will soon be in, shows her to the staircase,
and rings the bell; one of the men-servants asks her for her name, and
then opens the folding doors, announcing-"Madame Barbassou!"

It is my aunt Eudoxia who receives her.

My aunt Van Cloth, who is distracted with anxiety, thinks that she sees
before her some lady of my family, and in order to excuse herself for
disturbing her, begins by saying that she has come to see Captain
Barbassou, her husband.

Imagine the stupefaction of my aunt Eudoxia! But being too astute to
betray herself, she lets the other speak, questions her and learns the
whole story. Then, like the good soul that she is, and feeling sorry for
poor Ernest and his swollen stomach, she rings and orders the carriage
to be ready, so that she may go as soon as possible to her own doctor;
upon which my aunt Van Cloth, who is of an effusive nature, embraces her
most affectionately, calling her her dearest friend.

Just then my uncle arrives.

I was not present; but my aunt Eudoxia, who continues to laugh over it,
has related to me all the details of the affair. At the sight of this
remarkable fusion of "the two branches of his hymens," as she termed it,
the Pasha was positively dumbfounded. All the more so as my aunt Van
Cloth, who understood no more about this extraordinary position of
affairs than she did of Hebrew, threw herself into his arms, and
exclaimed: "Ah! Anatole! here you are, dear!--Our Ernest is in danger!"