The Americans and Russians eventually advance into France, eventually liberating Paris, during which crowds of people join in to help fight the retreating German occupants. The Comte de Balansun, while initially holding out hope that his son Francis might still be alive, eventually comes to believe that his son did indeed die. The novel also describes that during the occupation there were those who profited from the war, those who collaborated, those who switched sides depending on who was winning, and the different shades of morality that were created by the imposition of the darkness of the "night" during the German occupation.