"There you are, you see; all finished before nightfall, thank God!" he called to his comrade.

Charlotte smiled and continued on her way. No, she was not dreaming.

A soldier, posted near the bridge, barred her way and asked her to show him her papers. Charlotte obliged him. He took them and, probably being unable to read, decided to withhold them from her. He seemed, moreover, quite surprised himself by his own decision. "You can recover them from the Revolutionary Council after the necessary verifications," he announced, visibly repeating somebody else's words. Charlotte did not have the strength to argue.

Here at Boyarsk, winter had taken hold some time ago. But that day the air was mild, the ice under the bridge covered with large damp patches. First sign of thaw. And great lazy snowflakes fluttered down in the white silence of the wastelands she had crossed so many times in her childhood.

With its two narrow windows, the izbaseemed to observe her from afar. Yes, the house was watching her approach, its wrinkled facade lit up with an imperceptible little grimace, with a bitter joy of reunion.

Charlotte hoped for little from this visit. For a long time she had prepared herself to receive the news that would leave no hope: death, madness, disappearance. Or a pure and simple absence, inexplicable, natural, surprising no one. She forbade herself to hope and hoped all the same.

In the last days her exhaustion had been such that she thought only of the warmth of the great stove, against whose flank she would lean her back as she collapsed on the floor.

From the izbasteps she caught sight of an old woman underneath a stunted apple tree, her head muffled in a black shawl. Bent over, the woman was pulling at a thick branch buried in the snow. Charlotte called to her, but the old peasant woman did not turn round. Her voice was too weak and was quickly dissipated in the heavy air of the thaw. She felt incapable of uttering another sound.