Throughout the meeting a man had been standing at the back, looking at everyone in disdain. At the age of fifty, La Bûche had never had a wife. He was rather ugly, but, worse, he drank like a fish to counteract the heat of his forge. He discerned something other than love of humanity behind Joséphine’s defence of the lion tamer. He had understood from the beginning why she had always insisted that the German should be allowed to remain up there and that he must not be denounced. He had seen her going up the mountain several times. He had seen her starting up the track on her horse and continuing on the left-hand path towards the top rather than turning right towards the pastures and Le Simple. It obviously wasn’t the lions that she was going to visit up there, especially as, once, he had seen her on her way back down looking dishevelled. La Bûche was too old to fight in the war, but he was not too old to be jealous. Jealousy was the only feeling he could really indulge in. Jealousy was all he would ever be able to feel in relation to women, and to this woman in particular. He knew better than anyone what jealousy could lead someone to do. A hundred times the idea of getting rid of the German had entered his drink-addled mind. A hundred times he had already stabbed the lion tamer; a hundred times he had climbed the road that led from the village to murder him; a hundred times his virtual ascents had exorcised Joséphine’s attraction to the German. Except that, each of the hundred times, he had come up against the image of those immense wild beasts he heard roaring. A hundred times his desire to smash his rival had foundered on the terror he felt for the wild cats. Without the lions, La Bûche would already have quenched his hatred long ago. Without those lions, he would not have been frightened of the German. But there they were, mighty beasts pacing in circles, contained only by too-thin bars. In his mind, the lions were a large part of the attraction Joséphine felt for the lion tamer. La Bûche was the only man on earth to be in love with a woman who was more interested in lions; he was the only man to be jealous of lions.