" They trooped away gleefully, and I could not help
remarking on their cheerful humour.
"They are gentle as young girls," he said, "and far more tractable;
thievish, of course, and untruthful--but so are all children! They attach
themselves to me in a pathetic, dog-like fashion, without hope of
preferment or any ulterior object.... Yes, they have established
themselves in my heart, somehow or other; perhaps because I am an orphan
and rather lonely and susceptible.... I really love these poor Arabs, as a
father might love them----"
"That stick of yours: it looks business-like. May I ask whether you ever
chastise them?"
"Why not? Would I not thrash my own children if they deserved it? This
work in Africa," he went on, "attracts and interests me. At home I lose my
personality and become a sheep in a herd, but here, in the desert, I can
create and leave a mark, which has always been my ambition. I think I
could live in this country for ever. Can you understand such a feeling?
None of my colleagues can; their minds are in France, and they complain of
a colonial exile, as if Tunisia were the Devil's Island; they call me an
enthusiast, because I think well of this warm, palpitating soil in which I
seem, I don't know how, to have struck deep roots.
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