It did not help that the women received no news or letters from their menfolk. Buried in the hills, it was impossible to know what was really going on at the front, almost a thousand kilometres away. Couderc, the schoolmaster, was convinced that the newspapers did not tell the truth about the war because they remembered how, in 1870, they had inadvertently provided the Prussians with precious information. With few facts to go on, rumours from England started to circulate that the French army had suffered a rout, a veritable massacre, but no one was talking about it so as not to demoralise the rearguard. Couderc, who received post from many places, had a friend in Exeter. The papers in England were more forthcoming than the ones in Limogne. In France, papers had blank columns, where whole articles had been removed by the censors. However, according to his friend in Devon, thousands and thousands of French soldiers had been killed in a single battle at the end of August, the equivalent of ten towns the size of Cahors in one night – could that be true?

In the village, people felt that Couderc might have kept this to himself. They didn’t want to believe it, yet feared it was true because of the complete silence from the soldiers. Either they were all dead or they were paralysed by fear. Since the letter from England, the villagers did not believe the optimism peddled by the French press. They told each other the war was going badly, and every time the lions and tigers roared it felt symbolic and they trembled for the men and for the defenceless ewes over the hills. Like a fateful allegory, the howls and cries coming down the mountain evoked the image of frightened men deep in the Ardennes forest, men unwittingly offering themselves to the mouths of cannons, just as the ewes were vulnerable to the wild cats.