"What are you doing here?" said the priest.

He heard a noise behind him and turned round; another boy was in the room, standing right behind him; he too was about seventeen or eighteen. He had thin, contemptuous lips and his yellowish face looked wild, as if he were possessed. Philippe was on his guard but they were too fast for him. In a flash they attacked; one tripped him and knocked him down, the other grabbed his throat. But he managed to fight them off, silently, successfully. Catching hold of one of them by the collar, he tightened his grip so much that the boy was forced to let go. As the boy pulled away, something fell out of his pocket and rolled along the ground: it was some silver.

"Congratulations, you've moved fast," said Philippe, half choking, sitting on the floor, thinking to himself, "The main thing is not to make a big thing of it, just get them out of here and they'll follow me like little puppies. Then we'll sort it out tomorrow."

"That's enough, now! Enough of this nonsense… get going."

He had barely finished speaking when once again they threw themselves on him, silently, desperately, savagely; one of them bit him, drew blood.

"They're going to kill me," Philippe thought in amazement. They hung on to him like wolves. He didn't want to hurt them, but he was forced to defend himself; they punched him, kicked him, he fought them off and they came back at him even more violently than before. They no longer looked human, they were demented, animals… Philippe would have proven the stronger in spite of everything but they hit him on the head with a pedestal table with bronze legs; he fell down and as he fell he heard one of the boys run to the window and whistle. He saw nothing else: not the twenty-eight teenagers suddenly waking up, running across the lawn, climbing through the window; not the rush towards the delicate furniture that was being ripped apart and thrown out on to the grass. They were frenzied, they danced around the priest as he lay sprawled on the floor, they sang and shouted. One of the youngest, with a girlish face, jumped with both feet on to a sofa whose old springs creaked under the weight. The older ones had discovered a liquor cabinet. They dragged it into the drawing room, kicking it to move it along; when they opened it, they saw it was empty but they didn't need liquor to be drunk: the carnage was enough for them. They felt a terrifying kind of joy. Dragging Philippe by the feet, they threw him out of the window, so he fell heavily on to the lawn. At the edge of the lake, they swung him like a bundle… "Heave-ho! Kill him!" they shouted in their harsh, high-pitched voices, some of which still sounded childlike.

When Philippe fell into the water he was still alive. Out of a sense of self-preservation, or a final burst of courage, he managed to remain at the edge of the lake; he clutched the branch of a tree with both hands and tried hard to keep his head above water. His battered face was red, swollen and grotesque. They were throwing stones at him. He held on at first, clinging with all his might to the branch that was swaying, cracking, giving way. He tried to get to the other shore but he was being bombarded. Finally he raised both arms, put them in front of his face, and the boys saw him sink straight down, in his black cassock. He hadn't drowned: he'd got trapped in the mud. And that was how he died, in water up to his waist, head thrown back, one eye gouged out by a stone.

26

At the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Nîmes, a Mass was celebrated every year for the deceased members of the Péricand-Maltête family. Since only Madame Péricand's mother lived in Nîmes, this service was usually a brief affair in one of the side chapels, attended by the elderly lady herself-half-blind and obese, whose heavy breathing drowned out the priest's voice-and a cook who had worked for the household for thirty years. Madame Péricand had been born a Craquant, related to the Marseilles branch of the Craquant family who had made their money in olive oil. This ancestry seemed extremely respectable to her, of course (and her dowry had been two million, at its pre-war value), but it paled in comparison with that of her new relations. Her mother, the elder Madame Craquant, agreed with this view of things and, having gone to live alone in Nîmes, she observed all the Péricand rituals with great fidelity, praying for the dead and sending letters of congratulations to the living on the occasion of marriages and baptisms, just as the colonial English raised solitary glasses on the day London was celebrating the Queen's birthday.

This Mass for the deceased was particularly agreeable to Madame Craquant because she would stop at a tearoom on her way home from the cathedral and have a cup of hot chocolate and two croissants. As she was extremely fat, her doctor made her follow a strict diet, but her early morning rise and the lengthy and, to her, very tiring walk from the great carved door of the cathedral to her pew allowed her to devour these fortifying foods without remorse. Sometimes when her cook, of whom she lived in fear, had her back turned and was standing rigid and silent near the door of the tearoom-their two prayer books in her hand, Madame Craquant's black shawl over her arm-she would even draw a platter of little cakes towards her and, with affected nonchalance, pop a cream-filled choux bun into her mouth, or a cherry tart, or both.

Outside, her carriage, drawn by two old horses and driven by a coachman almost as fat as Madame Craquant herself, waited, flies buzzing around in the heat.

This year, everything was at sixes and sevens. The Péricands, who had fled to Nîmes after the events of June, had just learned of the deaths of the old Monsieur Péricand-Maltête and Philippe. News of the first had been conveyed by the Sisters in the nursing home where the old gentleman had had, according to Sister Marie of the Sacred Sacrament's letter, "a good death, very comforting, very Christian." She had even been so kind as to describe in the most minute detail the contents of his Last Will and Testament, which would be written up as soon as possible.

Madame Péricand read and reread the final sentence of the letter and sighed, a look of anxiety spreading across her face, only to be replaced, a moment later, with the expression of contrition a good Christian feels when she learns that someone she loves has gone to find peace with the Good Lord. "Your grandfather is with Jesus, children," she said.

Two hours later, the second blow to strike the family was revealed, but in less detail. The mayor of a little village in the Loiret informed them that Father Philippe Péricand had been killed in an accident and sent them papers that confirmed his identity beyond a doubt. As for the thirty wards in his care, they had disappeared. Since half of France was looking for the other half, this surprised no one. There was mention of a truck which had fallen in the river, not far from where Philippe had met his death, and his relations remained convinced that this had something to do with him and his unfortunate orphans. To cap it all, Madame Péricand was told that Hubert had been killed at the Battle of Moulins. This time the catastrophe was complete. The intensity of her sorrow caused her to cry out in proud despair.

"I gave birth to a saint and a hero," she said. "Our sons are making sacrifices for other people's sons." And she looked darkly at her cousin Craquant whose only child had managed to get a peaceful little post in the home guard in Toulouse. "Dear Odette, my heart is breaking. You know that I lived only for my children, that I was a mother, nothing but a mother" (Madame Craquant, who had been a trifle frivolous in her youth, lowered her head), "but I swear to you, the pride I feel makes me forget my bereavement."