The work of ‘instituteurs du bled’ during the colonial era – that is, primary school teachers working in remote rural locations, often on their own – has gathered a mythic aura in certain strands of French culture. That aura swirls around Albert Camus's story ‘L’Hôte’ of 1957: its central figure is a teacher, Daru, ‘qui vivait presque en moine’ in an ‘école perdue, content d’ailleurs du peu qu’il avait’ (83, ‘living almost like a monk in his remote schoolhouse […] content with the little he had’, 44). He is dedicated to his work and apparently respected by his pupils. The story of Jean Simonet, the teacher I quoted in the last chapter when discussing ‘adaptation’, also corresponds to the most positive, even heroic version of the myth, at least to start with: he recalled that the mountain village of Ait Aicha where he was given his first post after finishing at Bouzaréah did not appear on any of the maps he consulted, so he simply set off for roughly the right region, then asked around until someone could give him directions. On the last leg of his journey he was met by a mule train organized by the villagers, who somehow knew he was coming, and were pleased to see him arrive. This was in 1954; they had been petitioning for a school since 1938, and it had eventually been built in 1952. For Simonet the village was a very unfamiliar environment, far from anyone he knew, so from time to time he would travel to the town of Azazga to seek European company. Once he was invited by a French administrator to stay overnight on a Sunday to play bridge, but he declined, saying he should get back to the village to be ready for his pupils in the morning.