When they reached the bridge, they turned to the right and faced the fresh breeze from the river, which rolled along, calm and melancholy, bordered by tall poplar-trees. The stars looked as if they were floating on the water and were moving with the current. A slight, white mist that floated over the opposite banks filled their lungs with a sensation of cold, and Caravan stopped suddenly, for he was struck by that smell from the water, which brought back old memories to his mind. For suddenly, in his mind, he saw his mother again, in Picardy, as he had seen her years before, kneeling in front of their door and washing the heaps of linen, by her side, in the little stream that ran through their garden. He almost fancied that he could hear the sound of the wooden beetle with which she beat the 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 the odour of the trickling water, of the mist rising from the wet ground, of the heap of wet linen which he should never forget, the less that it came back to him on the very evening on which his mother died.
He stopped, paralysed by a sudden feeling of anguish. It was like a beam of light illuminating all at once the whole extent of his misfortune, and this meeting with vagrant thoughts plunged him into a black abyss of irremediable despair. He felt heartbroken at that eternal separation. His life seemed cut in half, all his youth gone, swallowed up by that death. All the former life was over and done with, all the recollections of his youthful days would vanish; 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 was gone forever, and the other might as well end now.
Then the procession of memories came. He saw his mother as she was when younger, wearing well-worn dresses, which he remembered for such a long time that they seemed inseparable from her. He recollected her in various forgotten circumstances, her suppressed appearance, the different tones of her voice, her habits, her manias, 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 flabby 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 a long time, and then, when he had got to the end of his tears—when his grief had, so to speak, run out of him—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 floating snow. The river, in which the stars were no longer reflected, and which looked as if it were covered with mother-of-pearl, flowed on, rippled by the wind. The air was soft and sweet, and Caravan inhaled it almost greedily, thinking that he could perceive a feeling of freshness, of calm and of superhuman consolation pervading him.
He really tried to resist that feeling of comfort and relief, and kept on saying to himself: “My mother, my poor mother!” He tried to make himself cry, from a kind of conscientious feeling, but he could not succeed in doing so any longer, and the sad thoughts which had made him sob so bitterly a short time before had almost passed away. In a few moments he rose to go home, and returned slowly, under the influence of that serene night, with a heart soothed in spite of himself.
When he reached the bridge, he saw the last tramcar, ready to start, and the lights through the windows of the Café du Globe, and felt a longing to tell somebody of the catastrophe that had happened, to excite pity, to make himself interesting. He put on a woeful face, pushed open the door, and went up to the counter, where the landlord always stood. He had counted on creating an effect, and had hoped that everybody would get up and come to him with outstretched hands, and say: “Why, what is the matter with you?” But nobody noticed his disconsolate face, so he rested his two elbows on the counter, and, burying his face in his hands, he murmured: “Good heavens! Good heavens!”
The landlord looked at him and said: “Are you ill, Monsieur Caravan?”
“No, my friend,” he replied, “but my mother has just died.”
“Ah!” the other exclaimed, and as a customer at the other end of the establishment asked for a glass of beer, he replied: “All right, I’m coming,” and he went to attend to him, leaving Caravan almost stupefied at his want of sympathy.
The three domino players were sitting at the same table which they had occupied before dinner, totally absorbed in their game, and Caravan went up to them, in search of pity, but as none of them appeared to notice
