"Ah! mademoiselle, what can one do with such people? how can one associate with them? They are canaille, mere canaille."
"We were talking to some of them," we said, "and thought them very intelligent."
He held up his hands in horror.
"But, mademoiselle, do you not understand? Certainly there are the Christian races, but for the most part, ce sont des Turques, des infidèles, des chiens. There is Marie there, pauvre Marie! it is bad enough for me, but then I have my work; but Marie, the pauvre Marie, she dies of ennui, she can speak to no one but me and the children."
The pauvre Marie seemed indeed to have lost the power of speech; she sat silently as her husband poured out his contempt of the canaille.
We had found the Greek women very entertaining in the morning, and they too had sat and looked at us in silence. But they had not been ashamed of their silence; Marie was, and felt awkward; so we all felt uncomfortable, and tried to talk to her.
One felt then how little actual language had to do with social intercourse. We could not get into touch with Marie, whose language we understood, in the same way that we had got into touch with the native women, whose language we did not understand.
They sat on and on; it was not until the sun began to send out long warning shoots of colour, heralding its disappearance behind the purple mountains, that they rose to go.
And we, worn out with this final effort in sociability, gave ourselves up to the quiet of the deserted camp, and watched the shades of night creep once more over the ruined walls and the distant hills, over the houses of the French engineer and the canaille.