No one took La Bûche’s behaviour seriously – he was single and jealous, that was all. For La Bûche, not having the doctor’s wife to look at was worse than being rejected. And he did not need to go up to the meadows to know that the lion tamer was in love with Joséphine. And he was sure they made love. They must have felt free to do what they liked in the hills in the beautiful weather; they must spend hours having each other and touching each other. They were together now for ever and that idea drove La Bûche mad. It was the war that had made it possible for them to love each other and it was the war that provided them with protection. Without the war they would never have found each other; their love would never have existed.

This disgusted La Bûche. Especially as he had a status to defend. He had always been regarded by everyone in the village as the strong man. He was basically a farrier and on top of that a blacksmith; he was a force of nature, a force to be reckoned with, because, first of all, he was constantly near fire, and his forge, which belched out steam all the time, and also because blacksmiths spend their days swinging their heavy hammers. In normal times, the monstrous clanging of hammer on anvil could be heard from one end of the village to the other. But since the animals had been sent to war and there was no more coal, La Bûche no longer fired up the forge or produced anything. He was reduced to repairing tools all over the area, because many were breaking, ‘because the women don’t know how to use them,’ he said – everything was the women’s fault. More than ever he had the arrogance of those men who think they’re above everything, better than other men, and, obviously, better than women. Since the men had gone off to war, he considered himself the only proper man in the village; but the lion tamer challenged that position, and his arrival had immediately annoyed La Bûche.