My dear son, send us a little money without fail, for I assure you that we are in great trouble. We have not been able to manage this year, as I told you, because of that hailstorm and the cow. I see your father worrying himself terribly, and at night I often see him, instead of sleeping, thinking about it and turning from side to side. If you cannot send us the whole amount, send what you can.
Good-bye, my dear son; the village folk often ask after you, and want to know when you are coming back. The neighbours send hearty greetings. As for me, you know that I have had no joy in life since you went away.
I enclose my letter, embracing you, and Peyral does likewise.
Your loving old mother,
Françoise Peyral.
VIII
... Jean leaning on his elbow at the window fell into a reverie, looking absently at the wide prospect of African scenery stretched out before him—the pointed outlines of the Yolof huts, grouped by hundreds at his feet—in the distance the troubled sea and the ceaseless onset of the African breakers; the yellow sun about to set, still shedding upon the desert, further than the eye could see, its wan radiance; sand interminable; a distant caravan of Moors; flights of birds of prey swooping through the air; and yonder, a point on which he fixed his eyes, the cemetery of Sorr, whither he had already escorted some of his comrades, mountain-bred like himself, who had died of fever in that accursed climate.
O to return home to his aged parents, to live in a little house with Jeanne Méry, quite close to the humble paternal roof. Why had he been exiled to this land of Africa? What had he in common with this country? As for this uniform and this Arab fez in which they had dressed him up, and which, for all that, gave him so grand an air, what a burlesque disguise for him, the humble little peasant from the Cevennes.
He remained there a long time lost in thought, dreaming of his village, this poor soldier on the banks of the Senegal. With sunset and nightfall, his thoughts plunged themselves in unrelieved gloom.
From the direction of N’dar-toute came the hurried drumming of the tom-tom, summoning the negroes to the bamboula, and fires were lighted in the Yolof huts. It was an evening in December; a vexatious winter wind sprang up, whirling the sand in eddies here and there, and the great, parched land shuddered with an unwonted sensation of chill.