In fact, the Dumonts are very handsome men, without a doubt (true, men are not judged in the same way as women). Everyone agrees, in Saint-Maurice, Avers, and Prébois. Their build, their blue eyes, their gait, their friendliness and willingness to help: they’ve got everything going for them. They have a very pretty nose, the same nose you’ll find on little Marcel, along with the blue eyes. The Dumonts, the Pugnets, and Raoul’s wife all have brown hair, a brown rare in these parts: very dark and shiny. And Raoul’s wife, even with the work she does, always outside and in the fields, is still very pale. Not suntanned like everyone else. Her upper arms, which you can see through the sleeves of her blouse, have stayed as white as milk. The Dumonts are really pale, not ruddy or tanned, even though they’re in perfect health. This is how we can, perhaps, imagine Marie Chazottes: a little brunette with blue eyes, white as milk, lively and shapely, like Raoul’s wife.

All those descendants I just mentioned and who can be seen living today are decent people, perhaps even a bit austere. Likewise, in 1843, no one had thought for a minute that Marie Chazottes could have run off. A gendarme used those words, but he was from the Graisivaudan valley. Anyway, run off with whom? All the boys from the village were still there. And everyone knew she wasn’t seeing anyone. And when her mother had called her back to put on her clogs, she’d been going out in her slippers. So if that was running off, it was running off with an angel!

No one talked about an angel, but almost. That is, when Bergues and the two other poachers, who knew what they were doing (and knew, too, every nook and cranny where someone could get lost), came back empty-handed, mention was made of the devil. In fact, people talked about him so much that the following Sunday the priest gave a sermon on the subject. There were only some meddling old women to listen; people went out as little as possible. The priest said the devil was an angel, a dark angel but an angel nonetheless. Meaning that if the devil had had something he’d wanted to do with Marie Chazottes, he would have gone about it differently. He has plenty of women among his clientele, but they don’t disappear; on the contrary. If the devil had wanted to bother with Marie Chazottes, he wouldn’t have carried her off. He would have . . .

Just then they heard a gunshot outside and two screams. The snow hadn’t stopped falling just because it was Sunday, quite the contrary, and the morning was so dark that the light at ten o’clock mass was exactly like the light at the end of vespers.

“Don’t move,” said the priest to his ten or twelve old women suddenly chilled to the bone.