BEFORE Marc Dutroux arrived it seemed the worst thing that could come to Sars la Buissiere was a dangerous driver. "For the sake of our children, drive carefully" reads the rusting road sign in the south Belgium village.
If Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo could have heard anything through the walls of the room where they were sexually abused and eventually starved to death, it would have been a few cars, an occasional tractor and the chat in the local cafe. Until last Saturday the village, 20 miles from the nearest city, was a quiet forgotten place.
Dutroux's two victims are known to everyone in Belgium simply as Julie and Melissa. In their home town, Grace Hollogne, people streamed into the funeral home to sprinkle holy water on the two identical white marble coffins. According to the missing posters still up in the town there was only two centimetres difference in height between them.
At the bar up the road the maid wears a black ribbon and talks about the electric chair for child abusers. Shaking hands with the thousands of sympathisers, Melissa's grandmother, Ms Annie Collet, wears a love heart pin with the girls' names underneath.
"I don't want the death penalty. I just want them to keep these people in prison until the end," she said. Her daughter, Corinne, Melissa's mother, has not eaten since the phone call at 8 p.m. on Saturday.
The despair in the flower filled rooms of the funeral home hardens into anger outside. The desire for vengeance is most poignant at Melissa's home. A sign on the front door asks the former justice minister, Mr Wathelet, if he has a clear conscience.
The neat lawn is smothered with flowers and toys, and in the middle a placard reads: "Take a child by the hand. Don't take an assassin by the hand."
The gingerbread coloured house faces an open field in a quiet roadway. The two girls had been rehearsing a dance for the end of year school pageant according to the grandmother. It was to take place three days after they disappeared in June 1995.
Theirs was a safe and friendly world, with a nearby motorway bridge to add a little excitement to an eight year old's life. Within sight of the house, it was from here the girls waved to passing cars going under the bridge. They may have been seen by their abductor on this bridge as he drove past.
There is another poster near the first. It reads: "The world is a dangerous place, not because of evil but because of those who see evil and let it happen."
Home made signs are also pinned to Dutroux's door. "Dutroux, you have killed. You have to die, along with all your accomplices." Beside his door a stone moulding is set into the wall. It shows a child Jesus holding the hands of two women. Two angels are flying above them.
Dutroux was known simply as the village thief; his associate Michel Lelievre, as the village idiot. Yesterday French police had sealed off the building and the garden, although they appeared to have stopped digging.
Outside the house people had come from all around to stand and stare. Most looked at the crumbling, whitewashed walls as if trying to imagine the horror of what went on inside.
Among the group outside, two middle aged women talked loudly about revenge, hanging, execution, castration. Behind them an old man cried silently into his handkerchief.
All over the country the national flag, car aerials, door knobs and lamp posts are hung with black ribbons. In shops and on the streets people signed a petition to instate non commutable sentences for serious crime, rather than bringing back the death penalty.
Tomorrow morning thousands are expected to attend the double funeral at the cathedral in Liege.
