The personalities of the antagonists are described by the author mainly through the speech, actions and consciousness characterization. The personalities of the dead woman’s children are conveyed through their attitude towards their mother, who are desperate and miserable about her death at first and then feel hostility towards her. The following extracts from the story illustrate the shift in their attitudes:

·                 Kneeling beside the bed, her son, a magistrate with inflexible principles, and her daughter, Marguerite, known as Sister Eulalie, were weeping as though their hearts would break.

·                 The nun was wildly-kissing the dead woman's hand, an ivory hand as white as the large crucifix lying across the bed.

·                 Grief and tears stopped her; she could not continue.

·                 Then the judge, still kneeling, his head buried in the bed clothes, cried in a voice altered by grief and deadened by the sheets and blankets…

·                 And his sister, frantically striking her forehead against the woodwork, convulsed, twitching and trembling as in an epileptic fit…

·                 The crisis slowly calmed down and they began to weep quietly, just as on the sea when a calm follows a squall.

·         And they loved her as they never had loved her before. They measured the depth of their grief, and thus they discovered how lonely they would find themselves.

·         They now became solitary, lonely beings; they could no longer look back.

·         The nun, straight as a statue, tears trembling in the corners of her eyes, was watching her brother, waiting. Then he crossed the room slowly, went to the window and stood there, gazing out into the dark night.

·         He stepped forward, quickly picked up the letters and threw them pell-mell back into the drawer. Then he closed the curtains of the bed…

·         … without looking again at the mother upon whom he had passed sentence, severing the tie that united her to son and daughter…

This sequence of these events shows the shift in the children’s attitudes towards their mother and displays their emotions which are changing from despair to hostility and misunderstanding. From loving their mother as they never had loved her before they become hostile and cold on discovering the fact that their mother had kept on secret. Their stubbornness and unwillingness to forgive their mother and accept her as she was with all her flaws and drawbacks proves the fact that they are egoistic and ungrateful to the woman, who scarified her life to them but was eager to keep something in secret. Moreover, the children’s emotional state and the tragic emotions do not correlate with the peaceful and quiet setting described by the author which means that they are not ready to accept the fact that their mother is dead and let her soul rest in peace. On the other, it is quite a natural reaction to the death of the close person but what makes it unnatural is their hostile attitude and stubbornness which serve as a characteristic feature of their personalities.

Speech characterizations employed by the author as well illustrate this gradation in attitude:

·         “Thank you, "father, but my brother and I prefer to remain alone with her. This is our last chance to see her, and we wish to be together, all three of us, as we--we--used to be when we were small and our poor mo--mother----”.

·         “Mamma, mamma, mamma!”.

·         “Jesus, Jesus, mamma, Jesus!”.

·         “You remember how mamma used always to read her old letters; they are all there in that drawer. Let us, in turn, read them; let us live her whole life through tonight beside her! It would be like a road to the cross, like making the acquaintance of her mother, of our grandparents, whom we never knew, but whose letters are there and of whom she so often spoke, do you remember?".

·         "These ought to be put in the grave with her; they ought to be used as a shroud and she ought to be buried in it.".

·          "Let us now retire, sister.".

The speech characterizations are marked by the usage of exclamatory sentences that shows the emotional state of the children and aposiopesis in the sentence ‘we wish to be together, all three of us, as we--we--used to be when we were small and our poor mo--mother----’ that show that the daughter was unable to complete the sentence due to her grief and despair; repetitions “Mamma, mamma, mamma!” and “Jesus, Jesus, mamma, Jesus!” that serve to emphasize their emotional state.

The last character introduced in the extract is a priest, whose image is created through the author’s explicit judgments, surface details of appearance and speech characterizations. The author’s explicit judgments about the priest are marked by the instances of irony and sarcasm such as: “He looked sad, with that assumed sadness of the priest for whom death is a bread winner. He crossed himself and approaching with his professional gesture…”; “Once more serene, the priest bowed, thinking of his bed.”. The surface details of his appearance and physical state are as well marked by the author with the help of irony: “He was red and out of breath from his interrupted digestion, for he had made himself a strong mixture of coffee and brandy in order to combat the fatigue of the last few nights and of the wake which was beginning.” The priest’s actions are depicted with the help of syntactic expressive means, such as asyndeton, which shows the mechanic nature of the procedure which is performed by him so often that has already become a routine and a way for earning a living: “He kneeled, crossed himself, prayed, arose and went out quietly…”. The most powerful metaphor that is used by the author to characterize the priest and that gives a reader a clear understanding of the priest’s attitude towards death is “the priest for whom death is a bread winner”.

The priest’s speech adds to the image of a person, for whom death is a routine. His phrases like: “Well, my poor children! I have come to help you pass these last sad hours.”; “As you wish, my children.”; “She was a saint!” show his pretended concern and mocking solemnity.