I remember what the man on the bridge had told me: “The French are all right in France.” What he meant, he explained, was that when the French are in their colonies they lose their natural inclination toward fraternity, equality, and liberty. They leave those ideals behind in Mother France, leaving them free to treat us like bastards in the land of our birth. The man on the bridge, I know, would have liked these farmers whose sons never leave Bilignin.
