Strangers

'To question an innkeeper's wife about a person, no matter what person, would surely mean to let that person appear in a dirty light from the outset — that I did not wish to do. I could well imagine people's gossip about the Swiss couple, what these in every way dull and dull-witted people of the neighborhood would have in readiness for the Swiss couple could only be repellent and vile. It is my experience that the natives are always suspicious of any stranger and that in their opinions, if they have any, they are dirty and vile, and the Swiss couple would be of course no exception. A stranger coming to the neighborhood cannot be well-meaning and well-disposed and well-intentioned enough — he will be reviled and abused and, there are numerous instances, destroyed. Especially when this neighborhood is the most backward imaginable. Two people who have lived together for years without being married and about whom there is nothing to be discovered except that they have money are enough for common character assassination. The people in this neighborhood are the most inconsiderate, and for a stranger every one of them is a fatal mantrap if he strays into it. '

from Yes