She opened the door; the smell of thick, acrid smoke rose up from the room downstairs, along with the unmistakable sound of a group of victorious soldiers: shouting, laughter, singing, their noisy boots, the clanging of heavy guns thrown on to the marble tables, the crashing of helmets against metal belt buckles, and the joyous roar from a proud, happy crowd, intoxicated by their victory, like the winning team at a rugby match, Hubert thought. He found it almost impossible not to shout out insults or collapse in tears. Rushing to the window, he looked outside. The street was starting to empty, but four men were walking abreast, rapping on the doors of the houses as they passed, shouting, "Lights out!" One after the other, lights were submissively switched off. All that remained was the moonlight, which cast a dull blue glow as it shimmered off the helmets and grey gun barrels. Hubert was shaking; he grabbed the curtain with both hands, pressed it against his mouth and burst into tears.

"Come on, now," the woman said, stroking his shoulder and feeling mildly sorry for him. "There's nothing we can do about it, is there? What can we do? All the tears in the world won't change anything. There are better times ahead. We have to live to see the better times, first and foremost we have to live… to go on… But you acted very bravely… If everyone had been as brave as you… and you're so young! Almost a child…"

He shook his head.

"No?" she said, lowering her voice. "Are you a man, then?"

She fell silent. Her fingers were trembling slightly and she dug her nails into the boy's arm as if she were grabbing hold of some fresh prey and kneading it before biting into it to satisfy her hunger. "Don't cry," she said very quietly, her voice faltering. "Only children cry. You're a man. When a man is unhappy he knows what he needs…"

She waited for a response but he said nothing and lowered his eyes. His mouth was closed and sad, but his nose wrinkled and his nostrils quivered slightly. So she said in a very quiet voice, "Love…"

20

In the room where the Péricand children were sleeping, Albert the cat had made his bed. First he'd climbed on to Jacqueline's small floral quilt and started to paw at it, gnawing at the cotton fabric that smelled of glue and fruit, but Nanny had come in and chased him away. Three times in a row, as soon as she'd turned away, he'd returned with a silent, graceful leap, but finally he'd had to admit defeat and so had curled up at the back of an armchair under Jacqueline's dressing gown. Sleep filled the room. The children were resting peacefully and Nanny had fallen asleep while saying her rosary. The cat, absolutely still, stared intently with one green eye at the rosary gleaming in the moonlight; the other eye remained closed. His body was hidden by the pink flannel dressing gown. Little by little, extremely quietly, one leg emerged, then the other; he stretched them out and felt them tremble slightly, all the way from his shoulder joint-that steel spring hidden beneath a soft, warm fur coat-right down to his hard, transparent claws. He sprang forward, jumped on to Nanny's bed and stared at her for a long time without moving; only the ends of his delicate whiskers quivered. He stretched one paw forward and started playing with the rosary beads; they hardly moved at first, but then he began to enjoy the smooth, cool feel of these perfect, tiny balls rolling between his claws; he swiped at them harder and the rosary fell to the floor. The cat took fright and disappeared under an armchair.

A while later Emmanuel woke up and started crying. The windows and shutters were both open. The moon lit up the rooftops in the village; the tiles glistened like the scales on a fish. The garden was fragrant, peaceful, and the silvery light seemed to shimmer like clear water, gently rising and falling over the fruit trees.

The cat poked his nose through the fringes of the armchair and studied the scene with a dreamy expression. He was a very young cat who had only ever lived in the city, where the scent of such June nights was far away. Occasionally he had caught a whiff of something warm and intoxicating, but nothing like here where the smell rose up to his whiskers and took hold of him, making his head spin. Eyes half closed, he could feel waves of powerful, sweet perfume running through him: the pungent smell of the last lilacs, the sap running through the trees, the cool, dark earth, the animals, birds, moles, mice, all the prey, the musky scent of fur, of skin, the smell of blood… His mouth gaping with longing, he jumped on to the window sill and walked slowly along the drainpipe. This was where a strong hand had grabbed him the night before and thrown him back to Jacqueline who was crying in bed. But he would not allow himself to be caught tonight.

He eyed the distance from the drainpipe to the ground. It was an easy jump, but he appeared to want to flatter himself by exaggerating the difficulty of the leap. He balanced his hindquarters, looking fierce and confident, swept his long black tail across the drainpipe and, ears pulled back, leapt forward, landing on the freshly tilled earth. He hesitated for a moment, then buried his muzzle in the ground. Now he was in the very black of night, at the heart of it, at the darkest point. He needed to sniff the earth: here, between the roots and the pebbles, were smells untainted by the scent of humans, smells that had yet to waft into the air and vanish. They were warm, secretive, eloquent. Alive. Each and every scent meant there was some small living creature, hiding, happy, edible… June bugs, field mice, crickets and that small toad whose voice seemed full of crystallised tears… The cat's long ears-pink triangles tinged with silver, pointed and delicately curly inside like the flower on bindweed-suddenly shot up. He was listening to faint noises in the shadows, so delicate, so mysterious but, to him alone, so clear: the rustling of wisps of straw in nests where birds watch over their young, the flutter of feathers, the sound of pecking on bark, the beating of insect wings, the patter of mice gently scratching the ground, even the faint bursting of seeds opening. Golden eyes flashed by in the darkness. There were sparrows sleeping under leaves, fat blackbirds, nightingales; the male nightingales were already awake, singing to one another in the forest and along the river banks.

There were other sounds as well: the steady thud of explosions, rising and bursting forth like flowers and, when the noise stopped, the rattling of every window-pane in the village, the banging of shutters being opened and closed, anxious words flying from window to window. At first, the cat had started every time he heard an explosion, his tail stiff, his fur bristling, his whiskers tense with fear. But he had got used to the way the rumble came closer and closer, no doubt imagining it was thunder. He leapt about in the flower beds, pulled the petals off a rose with his claws (the rose was in full bloom; the slightest breeze could destroy it; its white petals would fall to the ground, like soft, sweet-smelling rain). Suddenly, as quick as a squirrel, the cat darted up a tree, ripping the bark with his claws. Terrified birds flew off. At the end of a branch he began a savage, arrogant dance, taunting in his bold, warlike way, the sky, the earth, the animals, the moon. Now and again he opened his deep, narrow mouth and let out a piercing miaow, a sharp, provocative call to all the cats nearby.

The birds in the henhouse and the dovecote all woke up and hid their heads beneath their wings, catching the scent of fate and death; a small white hen tentatively climbed on to a metal drinking trough, knocked it over and rushed away, making terrified screeching noises. But the cat had jumped on to the ground now. He stood motionless… waiting. His round golden eyes shone in the darkness. There was the sound of leaves rustling and he came back carrying a small dead bird in his mouth, his tongue slowly lapping at its wound. Eyes closed, he savoured the warm blood. He had plunged his claws into the bird's heart and clenched and unclenched his talons, digging deeper and deeper into the tender flesh that covered its delicate bones with slow and rhythmical movements until its heart stopped beating. He ate the bird slowly, then licked himself clean, polishing the tip of his beautiful bushy tail, which was moist and shiny from the damp night air. He was feeling benevolent now: when a shrew darted between his legs he let it go; he was content merely to swipe at a mole's head, leaving it only half dead, a trail of blood on its muzzle. He studied the mole with a scornful trembling of his nostrils but didn't touch it. A different kind of hunger had arisen within him; he arched his back, raised his head and miaowed again, a call that ended in a harsh, imperious cry. An old red pussycat suddenly appeared on the roof of the henhouse, basking in the moonlight.