La corde au cou

A restless night in the bustling suburb of Sauveterre is shattered by the thunder of hooves and a desperate farmer’s frantic pleas. He bursts into the mayor’s home, frantic for fire‑fighters, insisting that the whole valley is engulfed in flames. The mayor, half‑asleep and already wary of false alarms after years of war and uprising, struggles to decide whether to summon the whole town to a crisis that may not exist.

The scene quickly spirals into a fraught tug‑of‑war between authority and panic, as the mayor dispatches messengers, rattles the town’s alarm bells, and grapples with the farmer’s fierce conviction. Listeners are drawn into the tense atmosphere of a community on the brink, wondering if the threat is genuine or a cunning ruse, and how the town’s fragile peace will hold under the weight of impending disaster.