Jean, the retired village policeman, added the clinching argument. According to him, denouncing the German would risk something worse than a storm. It would amount to declaring war on a bunch of wild animals. Old Jean was known to be a purveyor of old wives’ tales and was always peddling myths. Yet people believed him. Born in 1850, he had never been to war, but he had received twenty bounties for killing wolves. Old Jean had learnt in childhood how to put crushed glass and aconite into stinking rotting carcasses. He had not waited for the new law to start liberating the area from the wolves that ate the animals and the young shepherds as well.

‘It’s war that gives wolves the appetite for men … Beginning with the Hundred Years’ War, then the Wars of Religion and the Napoleonic Wars. It’s wars that give wolves the taste for human flesh; as soon as there’s a war they know the men aren’t there and they prey on the weak left behind. When there’s war, they attack, and here we are at war again!’

‘But what do wolves have to do with the lion tamer?’

‘He talks to them! Animals do what he tells them to do. Believe me, it’s far better to have that devil up there on our side than to cause problems for him.’

‘You’re just saying that because you want to sell him your goats!’

‘So what? So do you, but I warn you, picking a fight with a man who can make lions and tigers sit will bring nothing but bad luck.’

In Orcières, superstition reigned supreme and life was governed by popular belief. It was bad luck if you got out of bed on the wrong side, bad luck if you put the bread crossways on the table, bad luck if you broke a glass or saw a black cat or if two knives crossed. And in the evening, it was bad luck if a bird came into your house, if you knocked the salt over or swept after sundown … Even when the men had still been there, work in the fields was equally regulated by superstition. For a good harvest you had to burn leaves in the bonfire on St John’s Eve, sow seed by the full moon, ring the bells during a storm and not give clover to the cows if there wasn’t an ‘r’ in the day of the week. In this climate it was easy for old Jean to create new superstitions about the lion tamer. The women tried to navigate through all the old sayings, knowing that the more you listened to them, the more pervasive they became until eventually they stopped you doing anything at all.