The pair visit Uncle Huguenin and are joined by other visitors, Michel's former teacher Monsieur Richelot and Richelot's granddaughter, Mademoiselle Lucy. Quinsonnas introduces Michel to his friend, Jacques Aubanet, who dreams of being a soldier – a dream that is impossible, because warfare has become so scientific that there is really no need for soldiers anymore. Only chemists and mechanics are able to work the killing machines, and this profession is denied to even them, because "the engines of war" have become so efficient that war is inconceivable and all countries are at a perpetual stalemate. Before long, Michel and Lucy are in love. Michel discusses women with Quinsonnas, who sadly explains that what once was considered a woman does not exist anymore: due to mindless, repetitive factory work and careful attention to finance and science, most women have become cynical, ugly, neurotic career women. In fury, Quinsonnas spills ink on The Ledger, and he and Michel are fired on the spot. Quinsonnas leaves for Germany. In a society without war, or musical and artistic progress, there is no news, so Michel can't even become a journalist. He ends up living in Quinsonnas' empty apartment while writing superb poetry, but lives in such poverty that he has to eat synthetic foods derived from coal. He eventually writes a book of poetry entitled Hopes which is rejected by every publisher in Paris. As the year 1961 draws to a close, all of Europe enters a winter of unprecedented ferocity. All agriculture is compromised and food supplies are destroyed, resulting in mass famine. The temperature drops to thirty degrees below, and every river in Europe freezes solid. In despair, Michel spends his last bit of money on violets for Lucy, but finds that she has disappeared from her apartment, evicted when her grandfather lost his job as the university's last teacher of rhetoric. He is unable to locate her amongst the thousands of starving people in Paris. He spends the entire evening stumbling around Paris in a delirious state. Michel becomes convinced that he is being hunted by the Demon of Electricity, but no matter where he goes, he is unable to escape its presence. In the climax of the story, the heartbroken Michel, bereft of friends and loved ones, wanders through the frozen, mechanized, electrical wonders of Paris. The subjective narrative becomes steadily more surreal as the suffering artist, in a