specified locale wasn't loading when dir was used in load()

I was trying to load a directory of translation messages, but the specified locale would not load, because the program only loads the fallbacks.  Here is an example of the code that I was using:

     i18n.load('/i18n', i18n.locale).done(
          function() {
               $('[data-i18n]').each(function(index) {
                    $(this).i18n();
                    $(this).html($.i18n($(this).attr('data-i18n')));
               } );
          } );

If the locale was set to "fr" and the "fr.json" existed, the program would not load this file and instead of simply default back to "en.json".