They remained alone, the dead woman and her children.  The ticking of the clock, hidden in the shadow, could be heard distinctly, and through the open window drifted in the sweet smell of hay and of woods, together with the soft moonlight.  No other noise could be heard over the land except the occasional croaking of the frog or the chirping of some belated insect.  An infinite peace, a divine melancholy, a silent serenity surrounded this dead woman, seemed to be breathed out from her and to appease nature itself.

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:  “Mamma, mamma, mamma!” And his sister, frantically striking her forehead against the woodwork, convulsed, twitching and trembling as in an epileptic fit, moaned:  “Jesus, Jesus, mamma, Jesus!” And both of them, shaken by a storm of grief, gasped and choked.

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

A rather long time passed and they arose and looked at their dead.  And the memories, those distant memories, yesterday so dear, to-day so torturing, came to their minds with all the little forgotten details, those little intimate familiar details which bring back to life the one who has left.  They recalled to each other circumstances, words, smiles, intonations of the mother who was no longer to speak to them.  They saw her again happy and calm.  They remembered things which she had said, and a little motion of the hand, like beating time, which she often used when emphasizing something important.

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.

It was their prop, their guide, their whole youth, all the best part of their lives which was disappearing.  It was their bond with life, their mother, their mamma, the connecting link with their forefathers which they would thenceforth miss.  They now became solitary, lonely beings; they could no longer look back.

The nun said to her brother:  “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?”

Out of the drawer they took about ten little packages of yellow paper, tied with care and arranged one beside the other.  They threw these relics on the bed and chose one of them on which the word “Father” was written.  They opened and read it.

It was one of those old-fashioned letters which one finds in old family desk drawers, those epistles which smell of another century.  The first one started:  “My dear,” another one:  “My beautiful little girl,” others:  “My dear child,” or:  “My dear (laughter).”  And suddenly the nun began to read aloud, to read over to the dead woman her whole history, all her tender memories.  The judge, resting his elbow on the bed, was listening with his eyes fastened on his mother.  The motionless body seemed happy.