This ponderousness of reality also extended as far as the identification of the couple. "But that woman," many were to murmur. "I've seen her hundreds of times! You know, she works in the library at that Russian old folks' home… That's it. She's the one who came to Villiers later than the others, just before the war…"

As for the man, they recognized him as the elderly Russian who could sometimes be seen bent over a little vegetable garden that sloped down to the river. A man of few words who lived unobtrusively His mouth, currently wide open, seemed like life's last joke at the expense of his taciturn character.

A few Russians among the crowd were also eager to contribute to the identification of the two individuals. So it was that in the whispering that passed from one group to another, the name of Olga Arbyelina came to be disclosed. Then that of Sergei Golets. With these titles: Princess Arbyelina; Golets, former officer in the White Army. For the French townspeople such minutiae had the old-fashioned ring of titles like "Marquis" and "Vicomtesse" in a forgotten play of the romantic era. They paid much more attention to the young fisherman. He came running up holding a shoe that was missing from Golets's left foot. Nobody knew what to do with the shoe… As before, they could hear the rippling of the warm water, the distant crowing of cocks. And, without knowing how to formulate it, some of them were struck by this disconcerting thought: So, if it were me stretched out on the ground there, with my mouth open, instead of this poor Russian, yes, if like him I had just died, it would have had no effect on the sunshine, the grass, the lives of all these people, their Sunday-afternoon walk. This warm, sunny posthumous world, smelling of reeds and waterweed, seemed more terrifying than any hell. But there were very few to pursue this line of thought to its logical conclusion. In any case, the police were arriving at last.