Beneath the fragile patina of our French words Russian reality often showed through. The president of the Republic was bound to have something Stalinesque about him in the portrait sketched by our imagination. Neuilly was peopled with kolkhozniks. And the slow emergence of Paris from the waters evoked a very Russian emotion – that of fleeting relief after one more historic cataclysm; the joy of having finished a war, of having survived murderous repressions. We wandered along its streets, which were still wet, covered with sand and mud. The inhabitants were piling furniture and clothes outside their doors to let them dry – as Russians do, after a winter they had been beginning to think would never end.

And then, when Paris was resplendent once more in the fresh spring air, whose scent we guessed intuitively, there was a fairy-tale train, drawn by a garlanded engine slowing down and coming to a halt at the gates of the city, before the pavilion at Ranelagh station.

A young man wearing a simple military tunic stepped down from the railway carriage, walking on the purple cloth spread at his feet. He was accompanied by a woman, also very young, in a white dress with a feather boa. An older man, in formal attire, with a magnificent mustache and a fine blue ribbon on his breast, emerged from an impressive gathering grouped under the portico of the pavilion and advanced toward the couple. The gentle breeze caressed the orchids and the amaranths that decorated the pillars and stirred the feather on the young woman's white velvet hat. The two men shook hands.