There was more breeze at the top of the mountain and it was making Joséphine light-headed. She felt as if she were floating above the village. From up here all you could see of it was a few roofs between the trees, a long way down, far away, in another world. The man continued to talk about horses, his this time. He had a strong accent but his vocabulary indicated that he had been speaking French for many years. Then she reminded herself he was German like the men who had killed her husband. She was surprised that she found it so difficult to look him in the eye. Of course, there were all the terrible things she had heard about him, but there was also something wild about him and the way his gaze seemed to envelop her. She was thinking this when by accident she caught his eye. He looked at her without any evident emotion yet his gaze pierced her and she felt the full force of it. She tried to hold his gaze but scarcely had the man looked at her than she lowered her eyes, overcome by the power she felt emanating from him.

It was one of the last days of summer and the lion tamer’s shirt was plastered to his chest by the heat. The cicadas sounded hysterical, their cry as sharp and precise as a blade. The noise closed around Joséphine like the bars of a cage, a cage in which she felt desperately lost – no one knew she was there, no one would talk about her or believe what had happened to her. She fanned herself by pulling her blouse away from her chest, still sitting upright on her horse. His determination not to look at her aroused her further. It was something new for her, to have her charms, her scent, her natural beauty thrown back in her face. Suddenly she wasn’t even sure that she was beautiful, and she didn’t dare test this in the face of his indifference. She felt a defiance in him as if it were she who had to tame him. As a widow, she had no right to think of doing that, but it was sweet to have to forbid herself to desire this man.

To everyone in the village, Joséphine was magnificent, the most beautiful woman in the area – even in Figeac, the women were not as beautiful. Yet this man did not even look at her. That sweat she noticed on his neck was like a wave coming to get her, a wave flowing over the long beach of her isolation, a beach she would be happy to offer him, right there, to blot out all sorrow, so that she could drown in the feeling of sin. At least she could negotiate with guilt. She could commit a sin here and leave it here. Whereas the death of a husband – that would stay with her …