Seeing the hatred foreigners inspired, the police had been forced to take radical action to protect German citizens, even going as far as to house them in police stations or in prison. Overnight, all sorts of stories sprang up about these parasite Huns. One of the most popular told of an elegant German woman in a hat who distributed poisoned fruit jellies to the children. In Lot, newspapers alarmed the population with tales of the ‘sweetie lady’, who was said to drive around the Figeac area, ready to strike. A German woman, especially in a car, could not be mistaken. So it must be true. At the end of August a child died in Lugagnac. No one knew what he died of, but he had been found on a road, with no visible injuries, and no trace of wolves. There were hundreds of stories like that, proof that Germans were not there by chance, but to sabotage France. So it would be better to denounce the lion tamer to the police. After all, it was the metal cages that attracted lightning and brought storms to the village. To keep that devil above them was to expose them all to terrible dangers.

But they could not bring themselves to denounce him. Partly because he had just bought ten goats and ten ewes from them. They had brought them down from the summer pasture for him and it had been a real godsend to be able to sell them in secret and at a good price. As Fernand said, soon the government would claim more livestock to feed the soldiers, and they would have no choice but to honour the requisition. And the state did not pay in notes, it paid in Treasury bills, which would never be redeemed. At least if the lion tamer stayed, they would be able to sell him animals for food for his wild cats. They had calculated that on the basis of five kilos of meat a day per animal, in two weeks’ time the lion tamer would need ten more ewes and ten more goats, and so it would go on.

What was more, the German had given the mayor two horses he no longer needed and was unable to feed, two useful mounts which were not recorded in the army registers. Those horses did not need to be hidden away to avoid requisition. The women had agreed to give them to the Dauclercqs of La Brasse farm, two old women who had very long parcels of land with tobacco plants and three immense fields that ran along the river, but no one to help with tending them.

The other reason for not denouncing the German was that no one wanted to have anything to do with the gendarmes. It was the gendarmes who had come to requisition the men of the village, and perhaps one day they would be back to distribute death notices.