XXXI
The Governor of Goree did not forget his promise to the spahi Boyer; on his return Jean was posted again to St Louis, there to complete his term of exile.
Jean was conscious of a certain emotion as the country of sand and the white town came into sight; he had an affection for them, such as one always feels for places where one has lived and endured a long time. And then, in the first moments, he took a kind of pleasure in revisiting what was almost a town, almost civilisation, and resuming former habits and friendships. It was only by virtue of his prolonged deprivation of all these things that they acquired the slightest importance in his eyes on his return to them.
There is small demand for lodgings in Senegal. Samba-Hamet’s house had no new occupants. Coura n’diaye witnessed the return of Jean and Fatou, and opened the door of their former dwelling to them.
For the spahi, the days relapsed again into their former monotonous routine.
XXXII
Nothing had changed in St Louis. In their quarter the same tranquillity prevailed. The tame marabouts that lived on their roof clacked their beaks, as they sunned themselves, with the same sound of dry wood, such as is made by the cogged wheels of a windmill.
The negresses still pounded their everlasting kouss-kouss. Everywhere the same familiar sounds, the same monotonous stillness, the same calm of prostrate nature.
But Jean was growing more and more weary of it all.
Day by day he drew further away from Fatou; he was utterly out of conceit with his black mistress.