The nun was wildly-kissing the dead woman’s hand, an ivory hand as white as the large crucifix lying across the bed.  On the other side of the long body the other hand seemed still to be holding the sheet in the death grasp; and the sheet had preserved the little creases as a memory of those last movements which precede eternal immobility.

A few light taps on the door caused the two sobbing heads to look up, and the priest, who had just come from dinner, returned.  He was red and out of breath from his interrupted digestion, for he had made himself a strong mixture of coffee and brandy in order to combat the fatigue of the last few nights and of the wake which was beginning.

He looked sad, with that assumed sadness of the priest for whom death is a bread winner.  He crossed himself and approaching with his professional gesture:  “Well, my poor children!  I have come to help you pass these last sad hours.”  But Sister Eulalie suddenly arose.  “Thank you, father, but my brother and I prefer to remain alone with her.  This is our last chance to see her, and we wish to be together, all three of us, as we—­we—­used to be when we were small and our poor mo—­mother——­”

Grief and tears stopped her; she could not continue.

Once more serene, the priest bowed, thinking of his bed.  “As you wish, my children.”  He kneeled, crossed himself, prayed, arose and went out quietly, murmuring:  “She was a saint!”

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.