Over lunch at Le Moulin's café, Pascal speaks to Sadie in priestly aphorisms about democracy, extinction, and the coming end of cities. Naïs serves them regional salads with foie gras, and Pascal explains that he has softened his opposition to non-traditional farming, adopting Jean Violaine's pragmatic view that farmers must adapt to survive. He frames this as the central split between Jean and Bruno Lacombe.

Sadie probes about Naïs, learning she lives childless on her father Lacombe's property—the same place where her younger sister died. Pascal deflects, preferring his aphorisms. He recounts how he was originally drawn to the Guyenne to meet Bruno, who put him off, so he visited Jean Violaine instead; Jean connected him to peasant traditions, while Bruno later taught him much, though the two old men no longer speak.

Two local elders emerge from the bar speaking Occitan and tease Pascal about a heifer. Pascal explains that Mr. Crouzel, summoned to treat a mastitis-stricken cow, simply shot her in the head, leaving Pascal shaken. Pascal then expounds on violence: Crouzel's was pragmatic sympathy, but the purest violence is without sympathy or antipathy, citing an uncontacted Indian Ocean tribe that killed a poaching fisherman—calling the archer "the most innocent man in the entire world."

Sadie counters that violence is reasonable against threats of annihilation, agreeing in a way meant to open space for franker talk later. She privately suspects her contacts have overestimated Pascal, who couldn't stomach a cow being euthanized. As they leave for Le Moulin, Sadie asks whether Lacombe ever agreed to meet Pascal in person; Pascal reveals Bruno stopped seeing people twenty-five years ago—Sadie calculates this aligns with the death of his other daughter.