.
And the cherished, strewn leaves, which fall every autumn from the
vault-shaped plane-trees, are there also, and are crushed with a noise
so familiar under his steps--!

In the lower hall, when he enters, there is already grayish indecision,
already night. The high chimney, where his glance rests at first by an
instinctive reminiscence of the fires of ancient evenings, stands the
same with its white drapery; but cold, filled with shade, smelling of
absence or death.

He runs up to his mother's room. She, from her bed having recognized her
son's step, has straightened up, all stiff, all white in the twilight:

"Ramuntcho," she says, in a veiled and aged voice.

She extends her arms to him and as soon as she holds him, enlaces and
embraces him:

"Ramuntcho!--"

Then, having uttered this name without adding anything, she leans her
head against his cheek, in the habitual movement of surrender, in
the movement of the grand, tender feelings of other times.--He, then,
perceives that his mother's face is burning against his. Through her
shirt he feels the arms that surround him thin, feverish and hot. And
for the first time, he is frightened; the notion that she is doubtless
very ill comes to his mind, the possibility and the sudden terror that
she might die--

"Oh, you are alone, mother! But who takes care of you? Who watches over
you?"

"Who watches over me?--" she replies with her abrupt brusqueness, her
ideas of a peasant suddenly returned. "Spending money to nurse me, why
should I do it?--The church woman or the old Doyamburu comes in
the day-time to give me the things that I need, the things that the
physician orders.--But--medicine!--Well! Light a lamp, my Ramuntcho!--I
want to see you--and I cannot see you--"

And, when the clearness has come from a Spanish, smuggled match, she
says in a tone of caress infinitely sweet, as one talks to a very little
child whom one adores:

"Oh, your mustache! The long mustache which has come to you, my son!--I
do not recognize my Ramuntcho!--Bring your lamp here, bring it here so
that I can look at you!--"

He also sees her better now, under the new light of that lamp, while
she admires him lovingly. And he is more frightened still, because the
cheeks of his mother are so hollow, her hair is so whitened; even the
expression of her eyes is changed and almost extinguished; on her face
appears the sinister and irremediable labor of time, of suffering and of
death--

And