When they reached the bridge they turned to the right, and they got the fresh breeze from the river. It rolled along, calm and melancholy, bordered by tall poplar trees, and 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 he, suddenly, in his mind, 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 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 smelt that odor of the trickling water, of the mist rising from the wet ground, the heap of wet linen, which he should never forget, and which came back to him on the very evening on which his mother died. He stopped, with a feeling of despair, and felt heartbroken at that eternal separation. His life seemed cut in half, all his youth disappeared, 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 existed no longer, and the other might as well end now. And then he saw _Mamma_ 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 movements, 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 lank 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 say, run out of him, he again felt relief, repose, and sudden tranquillity. The moon had risen, and bathed the horizon in its soft light.