"I miss it very much, myself." Joly agreed. "Whatever we are speaking here feels...false for one, but also so..." He was not sure of the word exactly, he realized, and he hated that.

"It is as though it were some sort of product to be purchased here and not so much a language. It should not matter, I know, since some of us are here and safe still, yet..."

Yet Joly didn't like it all the same. Even more than the French, he'd lost the rolling tongue of his grandmother, the means to connect with a time and place that was a part of him, though he had never been there. The family stories of the revolution in Haiti made him regret losing the Creole even more than losing just his French. With French, he lost his home and sense of who he was, yes, but with the rest of it, he lost his history, and he loathed the idea that such things could be stolen quite so easily.

"It takes away something inside of us. Of all the things that have happened to me here, I think I like it least." His own expression was quite serious as he nodded at Felicity.

"One really does lose something without it. But then, you have had your own struggles and troubles as of late." And Grantaire was involved, because of course he was. "I am sorry to see that you've been hurt as well."