And to a pianist a child was no kind of audience. And yet here they all were, sitting on the ground, good as gold, listening to the young woman playing. Some of them – boys, of course – could glimpse Joséphine’s fine ankles moving under the lace of her dress. They followed the movement of her feet as she worked the pedals modulating the high and low notes. As for the girls, as well as the music, they were discovering up close the delicate complexion and sweet smile of the pianist, and a feminine ambiance that was much more enticing than muddy farms or mucky stables.

The villagers had never seen the children so calm. Joséphine closed the piano and rose, tall and svelte, with her long musical fingers. She turned to the group of worried mothers looking in through her window. They didn’t dare get angry with her and had even forgotten to feel relief.

No one would ever dare reproach Joséphine. She was regarded as the first widow, although they did not speak of this, and so embodied the tragedy they were all hoping to escape. Her misfortune made it seem as if she had been chosen as an offering. A bit like a lightning conductor, her sacrifice protected the others, and it made her sacred. Since the disappearance of her husband, they were wary of her grief and did not want to upset her. There was also the fact that she was associated with medicine, and, whether her husband was dead or not, she was still in a small way representative of that science from which they wished to benefit. When the doctor had been there, it was Joséphine who would greet you if he had not yet returned from his rounds. She would invite you to sit down and could always find some reassuring phrases. Providing comfort like that was part of medicine. Just as she had known how to reassure the village by riding up to see the lion tamer, and then swearing to everyone that the wild animals were firmly controlled and locked up, that there was nothing to fear and the lion tamer could be trusted. According to her, the lion tamer still had two goats and four sheep. She had also told them about the ossuary, beside the water tank, a mass of bones and carcasses jumbled together, which showed that the lion tamer had another source of livestock, big animals with large bodies, wide vertebrae and ribs twice as long as sheep ribs. The important point was the German knew where to get food for his lions, so there was no need to fear for humans.