He turned back towards his lions. He had never seen them so wrought up. They were normally calm in the late morning. He wanted to get them out of the big display cage and put them all into their separate ones, but they would not listen to his orders. They did not even see him this morning. Their gazes were fixed far beyond him; he no longer existed for them. Wolfgang knew they would not calm down; quite the opposite: tremors shook their bodies, their tails were upright, and their muscles strained with growing excitement. They paced nervously up and down in a sort of symmetrical dance, the choreography of famished beasts. Faced with this, the artist took over from the tamer. Because the perfectly synchronised quadrille made a fascinating dance, Wolfgang imagined the feverish music of Richard Strauss or Beethoven played by a little circus orchestra. It would make a beautiful spectacle in a lit circus ring, but he would never be able to reproduce such an act as he would never be able to get the eight of them to coordinate their movements in perfect symmetry. So he would be the only one to witness the most beautiful performance of his lions, and he wasn’t even in the cage with them. Behind him he now heard cowbells getting nearer, and then the sound of dozens of animals climbing up towards them, and that was when he understood that the idiots had not turned right; they had chosen to come up higher to cut across by the valley probably. But that would gain them, what, twenty minutes? And then they would have to go down the gentle slope and then climb up the next one.

The villagers and their animals passed less than twenty metres from the cages. Le Simple led the way, pulling his donkey, which was so overloaded its back was bowing. About twenty women and children followed with the flock, all walking with their heads down to avoid looking in the direction of the lions and tigers, suspecting that they were being watched. At the top of the hill, the two worlds met, one devouring the other with its eyes. Only the three dogs stopped to study the large cats from afar. They sensed they should not go near. The lions, for their part, feared nothing and nobody; they knew they were the strongest, yet in these circumstances they were powerless. Of all the animals in creation, they knew themselves to be dominant, with no rival as strong as they were, but they would never have the chance to prove it.