‘I used to have a small trap, but now I’m making it bigger. You see – it’s bigger than a circus tent!’

Joséphine took him in her arms, but she felt uneasy. It was because of the wood at the bottom of the igue. Down here it was fresh, almost cold. The sun could not penetrate the tree canopy and the light here was like a November morning. The vegetation was unsettling and strange. Then there was that tall cage, and the bars on the ground that he was going to erect, and all the heavy tools in the wagon; everything here spoke of death, certain death for so many animals to come … She did not want to stay here, and anyway she had to go back up to reassure the horse she had left at the top, and to return to her hut. Suddenly, everything was frightening, and she felt the same sense of loss and emptiness from her life before, before the war, before death, before these bars and cages, before the sheep and wild cats, before the animals that disappeared and had to be watched, before all this …

Wolfgang went with her. They climbed up a slope that was less steep, a gap where the rock had collapsed. They walked on broken stones which almost made a path. Once they were at the top, since Joséphine’s horse was on the other side, they went round on a path overlooking the igue, which gaped like the crater of a diabolical volcano, a volcano boiling with leaves to the centre of which animals scurried, attracted by the odour of tar, unwitting prey throwing itself into the wolf’s mouth.

Wolfgang suggested that Joséphine stay with him for the night, but she had to get back to the ewes. What she did not say was that she also wanted to get back to her hut opening onto the meadows. They were not sorry to part this time, certain that they would see each other soon.