The moon had risen; it bathed the horizon in its placid light. The tall poplars towered up, silver in the moonshine, and the mist, on the plain, seemed like floating snow: the river, where the stars swam no more, but which seemed covered with mother-of-pearl, still flowed on, wrinkled by spasmodic gleams. The air was mild, the breeze full of perfume. A feeling of indolence passed over the world in the earth’s sleep, and Caravan drank in this mildness of the night: he breathed deep, thinking he felt penetrated to the extremity of his limbs by a freshness, a calm, a superhuman consolation.

All the same he resisted this invasive well-being, he repeated: ‘My mother, my poor mother’, urging himself to weep by a sort of feeling that a decent man should be weeping; but he couldn’t weep any more: and no sadness even forced him to the thoughts which, just a moment before, had made him sob so painfully.

Then he rose to go in, coming back with slow steps, enveloped in the calm indifference of serene nature, and his heart appeased in spite of himself.

When he reached the bridge, he saw the head-lights of the last tramcar ready to set out, and behind it, the lit up windows of the Globe Café.

Then a need came over him of telling somebody about the catastrophe, of exciting pity, of making himself interesting. He put on a mournful face; pushed open the door of the establishment, and advanced to the counter where the proprietor was still on his throne. He counted on producing an effect; everybody would get up, would come to him, with their hands outstretched: ‘Tell us, what’s the matter?’ But nobody noticed the desolation on his face. Then he leant his elbows on the counter, and clutching his head in his hands, murmured: ‘God, God!’

The proprietor looked at him: ‘You are ill, Monsieur Caravan?’ He answered: ‘No, my poor chap, but my mother has just died.’ The proprietor let out an absent-minded ‘Ah’, and as a client at the back of the establishment, was shouting: ‘Beer, please’, he answered at once in a terrible voice: ‘All right, boo-oom! it’s coming!’ and rushed to serve him, leaving Caravan stupefied.

At the same table as before dinner, absorbed and motionless, the three domino fiends were still playing. Caravan went up to them in search of commiseration. As none of them seemed to see him, he decided to speak. ‘A little while ago’, he said to them, ‘a great misfortune befell me.’

They raised their heads slightly, all three at the same time, but keeping their eyes fixed on the game they were busy on.

‘Yes, what’s happened?’

‘My mother has just died.’

One of them murmured: ‘Ah, heavens!’ with that air of false distress which people who are indifferent assume. Another, finding nothing to say, nodded his head, and produced a kind of mournful whistling. The third went back to his game, as if he had thought: ‘That’s all it is’.

Caravan was expecting one of those expressions which are referred to as ‘coming from the heart’. Seeing himself received like this, he went away, indignant at their calm in face of a friend’s grief, although that grief, at this very moment, was so dulled that he hardly felt it any more.

And he went out.

His wife was waiting for him in her night-gown, seated on a low chair near the open window, and still thinking of the inheritance.

‘Take off your things,’ she said, ‘we’ll have a talk when we are in bed.’

He raised his head, and, indicating the ceiling with his eyes: ‘But——up there. Is there anybody?’