The narrator opens with a digression about Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the anti-Semitic French novelist who, in 1939, took a job as a ship's doctor transporting troops between Casablanca and Marseille despite secretly favoring the Germans. She read about him in a water-damaged biography found at the Dubois house. On his third voyage, Céline's ship rammed and sank a British torpedo gunboat—a vessel of France's allies—killing everyone aboard, while Céline's ship sailed on unharmed. She frames this as remarkable, undeserved luck.

The narrator reflects that she has been enjoying similar luck. She had been bracing for further encounters with Robert the Terrible, believing she had scared him off, and imagining him struggling to explain the life insurance policy he secretly took out on Agathe.

Lucien then informs her that Robert is hospitalized in Limoges in a diabetic coma. Agathe has reported that Robert was already on kidney dialysis, his health is collapsing, and a priest has been summoned. The narrator feigns compassion, noting he had not looked well.

Privately, she views this as extraordinary good fortune: Robert is incapacitated far away, and Agathe will be occupied at his bedside. The narrator concludes this development neutralizes the threat posed by whoever had contacted Robert—likely her own employers warning her of her disposability—since Robert can no longer expose her cover. She dismisses him as practically dead.