However steep the hills were, the grass in the meadows was abundant and lush. The sheep grazed all day long and in the evening returned sated and round, almost drunk, and it was easy to pen them for the night. Once they were assembled as close as possible to the hut, they slept all night without requiring anything from her. When sheep are on land that is less satisfying and there is not enough to eat, they go on grazing after sundown, sometimes all through the night. They scatter and don’t sleep and the shepherd has trouble keeping an eye on them all. That was why Joséphine always gathered the sheep at the end of the day and penned them in to protect them from wolves or wandering dogs. The three Beaucerons stayed awake standing guard. They were dependable, and Joséphine could go to sleep without worrying.

In leaving the village, Joséphine had left behind the fears of the villagers and no longer had to witness the effect of the letters that the women had been receiving for some time, which they read together in the evenings and which spoke of shelling, of cries, of endless exhaustion and wounds. She even managed to forget the English articles Couderc had read to her, and only to her, to save the others from visions of the apocalypse. As she walked amongst the ewes during the day, Joséphine’s gaze wandered over the sea of peaceful hills, even though she knew that in the north, eight hundred kilometres from here, scenes of horror were playing out in front of terrified civilians. Joséphine also knew that at that very moment, in the villages near the front, women and children had to endure squads of German cavalry charging down on huge black horses, spurring on their excited mounts, which dragged behind them strange packages attached by straps. These were the bodies of French soldiers. Whilst here, in the hills, everything seemed so tranquil, over there, mad cavalry were galloping with their trophies into the centre of villages, making for the main square where they would parade as if they were a circus attraction. The corpses attached to their horses scraped along the ground, throwing up dust. The officers’ game was to draw their sabres and slice one of the heads of the vanquished in two, so that the parts twirled merrily as if on a roundabout …

Now that she had some distance from Orcières, she understood that the reason Couderc had read her all those reports was that he thought that hearing of such horrors would make the death of her husband less painful. Dr Manouvrier was not the only victim of the war, and in the scheme of barbarity, in a sense, he had been spared. But Joséphine was not consoled and had felt nothing but profound disgust for humanity.