he linen in the calm silence of the country,
and her voice, as she called out to him: "Alfred, bring me some soap."
And he smelled that odor of running water, of the mist rising from the
wet ground, that marshy smell, which he should never forget, and which
came back to him on this very evening on which his mother had died.

He stopped, seized with a feeling of despair. A sudden flash seemed to
reveal to him the extent of his calamity, and that breath from the river
plunged him into an abyss of hopeless grief. His life seemed cut in
half, his youth disappeared, swallowed up by that death. All the former
days were over and done with, all the recollections of his youth had
been swept away; for the future, there would be nobody to talk to him of
what had happened in days gone by, of the people he had known of old,
of his own part of the country, and of his past life; that was a part
of his existence which existed no longer, and the rest might as well end
now.

And then he saw "the mother" as she was when young, wearing well-worn
dresses, which he remembered for such a long time that they seemed
inseparable from her; he recollected her movements, the different tones
of her voice, her habits, her predilections, her fits of anger, the
wrinkles on her face, the movements of her thin fingers, and all her
well-known attitudes, which she would never have again, and clutching
hold of the doctor, he began to moan and weep. His thin legs began to
tremble, his whole stout body was shaken by his sobs, all he could say
was:

"My mother, my poor mother, my poor mother!"

But his companion, who was still drunk, and who intended to finish the
evening in certain places of bad repute that he frequented secretly,
made him sit down on the grass by the riverside, and left him almost
immediately, under the pretext that he had to see a patient.

Caravan went on crying for some time, and when he had got to the end of
his tears, when his grief had, so to say, run out, he again felt relief,
repose and sudden tranquillity.

The moon had risen, and bathed the horizon in its soft light.

The tall poplar trees had a silvery sheen on them, and the mist on the
plain looked like drifting snow; the river, in which the stars were
reflected, and which had a sheen as of mother-of-pearl, was gently
rippled by the wind. The air was soft and sweet, and Caravan inhaled
it almost greedily, and thought that he could perceive a feeling of
freshness, of calm