receiving in monosyllables or with simple shrugs of the shoulders
every attempt of mine--and I made many--to renew an intercourse.

As such uncivil taciturnity is very rare amongst Frenchmen, I began to
examine my companions with more attention than I had hitherto done, in
order to discover, if I could, some clue to their strange behavior. I
scanned them curiously, and it was then I noticed for the first time
that their faces wore a look of the most profound dejection--so
profound indeed that I wondered how it was that I had not observed it
at once upon seeing them. Their features were pale and drawn; their
eyes, rimmed with black, were cast moodily on the ground, and their
heads, hanging heavily upon their chests, had, seemingly, a weighty
load of sorrow to press them down.

Besides this, their gait was uneven, undecided, I might almost say
spasmodical: they did not keep step, although close side by side, for
now one and now the other, as though goaded by a troublesome thought
which he wished to avoid, would of a sudden quicken his pace and break
into a hasty, feverish walk, or, contrarily, as though held back by
the chain of some unhappy reflection, lag in his stride and draw his
hand across his brow with a gesture of pain.

Each seemed so wrapped in the gloom of his own musings as to be
unconscious of all around him, and I began to feel angry with myself
for having intruded upon the privacy of this grief with my idle and
silly chattering. A feeling of remorse, too, sprang up in me as I
remembered that for a moment I had accused these poor people of
churlishness and set down the sensitiveness of their sorrow to a sulky
rudeness. There must be something very revolting to the feeling of our
better nature in the sense of an injustice done even in thought, for I