The narrator, posing as Sadie, notices increasing silences when she enters Moulinard conversations, uncertain whether they signal trust in covert planning or suspicion of her. Pascal alternately includes and excludes various people, and one evening invites her—pointedly in front of Jérôme and Alexandre—to walk with him to Jean's house to discuss plans for the upcoming agricultural fair, now seven days away. Burdmoore insists on joining despite Pascal's evident reluctance, revealing growing enmity between them.

On the walk, Burdmoore quotes a line he attributes to Jean from 1968, which Pascal corrects. They encounter Crouzel and his mother on the road, and Pascal explains how peasants survive through small canton assignments like maintaining unused tourist trails.

At Jean's ramshackle home, Jean outlines plans for dairy farmers to block the fair entrance from the D79 with around thirty milk tankers, dumping and giving away milk simultaneously. He proposes the Moulinards form a human barrier behind the tractors. Sensing her opportunity, Sadie improvises off-script, revealing in French that Deputy Minister Paul Platon will make a surprise appearance. When Jean questions how she knows, she fabricates a story about having walked dogs in Vincennes for Platon's jealous former mistress, Hélène de Marche, who supposedly tipped her off.

Pascal unwittingly reinforces her cover by insisting the information stay secret to prevent Platon from canceling, and begins envisioning trapping Platon with a dairy-farmer cordon. Jean warns this could mean mass injuries and arrests; Pascal counters they might create a zone of occupation.

As the evening winds down, Jean produces pastis and a box of prehistoric relics he claims to have unearthed, including an alleged 600,000-year-old tool. Burdmoore jokes it is "head-smashing equipment." Pascal insults Burdmoore in French; Burdmoore, drunk and fed up, threatens to bash Pascal's head with the rock before storming off into the dark with it. Sadie volunteers to go after him. Jean then admits to Pascal that the relic story was made up, and the two laugh as she departs.