CHAPTER XV.
"L'AMIE DU DRAPEAU."
"Did I not say he would eat fire?"
"Pardieu! C'est un brave."
"Rides like an Arab."
"Smokes like a Zouave."
"Cuts off a head with that back circular sweep--ah--h----h!magnificent!"
"And dances like an Aristocrat; not like a tipsy Spahi!"
The last crown to the chorus of applause, and insult to the circleof applauders, was launched with all the piquance of inimitablecanteen-slang and camp-assurance, from a speaker who had perched astrideon a broken fragment of wall, with her barrel of wine set up on end onthe stones in front of her, and her six soldiers, her gros bebees, asshe was given maternally to calling them, lounging at their ease on thearid, dusty turf below. She was very pretty, audaciously pretty, thoughher skin was burned to a bright sunny brown, and her hair was cut asshort as a boy's, and her face had not one regular feature in it. Butthen--regularity! who wanted it, who would have thought the mostpure classic type a change for the better, with those dark, dancing,challenging eyes; with that arch, brilliant, kitten-like face, so sunny,so mignon, and those scarlet lips like a bud of camellia that were neverso handsome as when a cigarette was between them, or sooth to say, notseldom a short pipe itself?
She was pretty, she was insolent, she was intolerably coquettish, shewas mischievous as a marmoset; she would swear, if need be, like aZouave; she could fire galloping, she could toss off her brandy or hervermouth like a trooper; she would on occasion clinch her little brownhand and deal a blow that the recipient would not covet twice; she wasan enfant de Paris and had all its wickedness at her fingers; she wouldsing you guinguette songs till you were suffocated with laughter, andshe would dance the cancan at the Salle de Mars, with the biggestgiant of a Cuirassier there. And yet with all that, she was not whollyunsexed; with all that she had the delicious fragrance of youth, andhad not left a certain feminine grace behind her, though she wore avivandiere's uniform, and had been born in a barrack, and meant to diein a battle; it was the blending of the two that made her piquante, madeher a notoriety in her own way; known at pleasure, and equally, in theArmy of Africa as "Cigarette," and "L'Amie du Drapeau."
"Not like a tipsy Spahi!" It was a cruel cut to her gros bebees, mostlySpahis, lying there at her feet, or rather at the foot of the wall,singing the praises--with magnanimity beyond praise--of a certainChasseur d'Afrique.
"Ho, Cigarette!" growled a little Zouave, known as Tata Leroux. "That isthe way thou forsakest thy friends for the first fresh face."
"Well, it is not a face like a tobacco-stopper, as thine is, Tata!"responded Cigarette, with a puff of her namesake; the repartee of thecamp is apt to be rough. "He is Bel-a-faire-peur, as you nickname him."
"A woman's face!" growled the injured Tata; whose own countenance was ofthe color and well-nigh of the flatness of one of the red bricks of thewall.
"Ouf!" said the Friend of the Flag, with more expression in that singleexclamation than could be put in a volume. "He does woman's deeds, doeshe? He has woman's hands, but they can fight, I fancy? Six Arabs to hisown sword the other day in that skirmish! Superb!"
"Sapristi! And what did he say, this droll, when he looked at themlying there? Just shrugged his shoulders and rode away. 'I'd better havekilled myself; less mischief, on the whole!' Now who is to make anythingof such a man as that?"
"Ah! he did not stop to cut their gold buttons off, and steal theircangiars, as thou wouldst have done, Tata? Well! he has not learned laguerre," laughed Cigarette. "It was a waste; he should have brought metheir sashes, at least. By the way--when did he join?"
"Ten--twelve--years ago, or thereabouts."
"He should have learned to strip Arabs by this time, then," saidthe Amie du Drapeau, turning the tap of her barrel to replenish thewine-cup; "and to steal from them too, living or dead. Thou must takehim in hand, Tata!"
Tata laughed, considering that he had received a compliment.
"Diable! I did a neat thing yesterday. Out on the hills, there, wasa shepherd; he'd got two live geese swinging by their feet. They werescreeching--screeching--screeching!--and they looked so nice and soplump that I could smell them, as if they were stewing in a casserole,till I began to get as hungry as a gamin. A lunge would just have cutthe question at once; but the orders have got so strict about pettingthe natives I thought I wouldn't have any violence, if the thing wouldgo nice and smoothly. So I just walked behind him, and tripped him upbefore he knew where he was--it was a picture! He was down with his facein the sand before you could sing Tra-la-la! Then I just sat upon him;but gently--very gently; and what with the sand and the heat, and thesurprise, and, in truth, perhaps, a little too, my own weight, he washalf suffocated. He had never seen me; he did not know what it was thatwas sitting on him; and I sent my voice out with a roar--'I am a demon,and the fiend hath bidden me take him thy soul to-night!' Ah! how hebegan to tremble, and to kick, and to quiver. He thought it was thedevil a-top of him; and he began to moan, as well as the sand would lethim, that he was a poor man, and an innocent, and the geese were theonly things he ever stole in all his life. Then I went through a littlepantomime with him, and I was very terrible in my threats, and he waschoking and choking with the sand, though he never let go of the geese.At last I relented a little, and told him I would spare him that once,if he gave up the stolen goods, and never lifted his head for anhour. Sapristi! How glad he was of the terms! I dare say my weight wasunpleasant; so the geese made us a divine stew that night, and the lastthing I saw of my man was his lying flat as I left him, with his facestill down in the sand-hole."
Cigarette nodded and laughed.
"Pretty fair, Tata; but I have heard better. Bah! a grand thingcertainly, to fright a peasant, and scamper off with a goose!"
"Sacre bleu!" grumbled Tata, who was himself of opinion that his exploithad been worthy of the feats of Harlequin; "thy heart is all gone to theEnglishman."
Cigarette laughed saucily and heartily, tickled at the joke. Sentimenthas an exquisitely ludicrous side when one is a black-eyed wine-sellerperched astride on a wall, and dispensing bandy-dashed wine to half adozen sun-baked Spahis.
"My heart is a reveil matin, Tata; it wakes fresh every day. AnEnglishman! Why dost thou think him that?"
"Because he is a giant," said Tata.
Cigarette snapped her fingers:
"I have danced with grenadiers and cuirassiers quite as tall, and twiceas heavy. Apres?"
"Because he bathes--splash! Like any water-dog."
"Because he is silent."
"Because he rises in his stirrups."
"Because he likes the sea."
"Because he knows boxing."
"Because he is so quiet, and blazes like the devil underneath."
Under which mass of overwhelming proofs of nationality the Amie duDrapeau gave in.
"Yes, like enough. Besides, the other one is English. One of theChasseurs d'Afrique tells me that the other one waits on him like aslave when he can--cleans his harness, litters his horse, saves him allthe hard work, when he can do it without being found out. Where did theycome from?"
"They will never tell."
Cigarette tossed her nonchalant head, with a pout of her cherry lips,and a slang oath.
"Paf!--they will tell it to me!"
"Thou mayest make a lion tame, a vulture leave blood, a drum beat itsown rataplan, a dead man fire a musket; but thou wilt never make anEnglishman speak when he is bent to be silent."
Cigarette launched a choice missile of barrack slang and an arrayof metaphors, which their propounder thought stupendous in theirbrilliancy.
"When you stole your geese, you did but take your brethren home!Englishmen are but men. Put the wine in their head, make them whirl ina waltz, promise them a kiss, and one turns such brains as they haveinside out, as a piou-piou turns a dead soldier's wallet. When a womanis handsome, she is never denied. He shall tell me where he comes from.I doubt that it is from England! See here--why not
! first, he neversays God-damn; second, he don't eat his meat raw; third, he speaks verysoft; fourth, he waltzes so light, so light! fifth, he never grumbles inhis throat like an angry bear; sixth, there is no fog in him. How can hebe English with all that?"
"There are English, and English," said the philosophic Tata, who piquedhimself on being serenely cosmopolitan.
Cigarette blew a contemptuous puff of smoke.
"There was never one yet that did not growl! Pauvres diables! If theydon't use their tusks, they sit and sulk!--an Englishman is alwaysboxing or grumbling--the two make up his life."
Which view of Anglo-rabies she had derived from a profound study ofvarious vaudevilles, in which the traditional God-damn was pre-eminentin his usual hues; and having delivered it, she sprang down from herwall, strapped on her little barrel, nodded to her gros bebees, wherethey lounged full-length in the shadow of the stone wall, and left themto resume their game at Boc, while she started on her way, as swift andas light as a chamois, singing, with gay, ringing emphasis that echoedall down the hot and silent air.
Hers was a dashing, dauntless, vivacious life, just in its youth, lovingplunder, and mischief, and mirth; caring for nothing; and always readywith a laugh, a song, a slang repartee, or a shot from the daintypistols thrust in her sash, that a general of division had given her,whichever best suited the moment. She had never shed tears in her life.
Her mother a camp-follower, her father nobody knew who, a spoiled childof the Army from her birth, with a heart as bronzed as her cheek;yet with odd, stray, nature-sown instincts here and there, of adevil-may-care nobility, and of a wild grace that nothing couldkill--Cigarette was the pet of the Army of Africa, and was as lawless asmost of her patrons.
She would eat a succulent duck, thinking it all the spicier because ithad been a soldier's "loot"; she would wear the gold plunder off deadArabs' dress, and never have a pang of conscience with it; she woulddance all night long, when she had a chance, like a little Bacchante;she would shoot a man, if need be, with all the nonchalance in theworld. She had had a thousand lovers, from handsome marquises of theGuides to tawny, black-browed scoundrels in the Zouaves, and she hadnever loved anything, except the roll of the pas de charge, and thesight of her own arch, defiant face, with its scarlet lips and its shortjetty hair, when she saw it by chance in some burnished cuirass, thatserved her for a mirror. She was more like a handsome, saucy boy thananything else under the sun, and yet there was that in the pretty,impudent, little Friend of the Flag that was feminine with itall--generous and graceful amid all her boldness, and her license, herrevelries, and the unsettled life she led in the barracks and the camps,under the shadow of the eagles.
Away she went down the crooked windings and over the ruined gardens ofthe old Moorish quarter of the Cashbah; the hilts of the tiny pistolsglancing in the sun, and the fierce fire of the burning sunlight pouringdown unheeded on the brave, bright hawk eyes that had never, since theyfirst opened to the world, drooped or dimmed for the rays of the sun, orthe gaze of a lover; for the menace of death, or the presence of war.
Of course, she was a little Amazon; of course, she was a littleGuerrilla; of course, she did not know what a blush meant; of course,her thoughts were as slang and as riotous as her mutinous mischief wasin its act; but she was "bon soldat," as she was given to say, with atoss of her curly head; and she had some of the virtues of soldiers.Soldiers had been about her ever since she first remembered havinga wooden casserole for a cradle, and sucking down red wine through apipe-stem. Soldiers had been her books, her teachers, her models, herguardians, and, later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She hadhad no guiding-star, except the eagles on the standards; she had had nocradle-song, except the rataplan and the reveille; she had had nosense of duty taught her, except to face fire boldly, never to betray acomrade, and to worship but two deities, "la Gloire" and "la France."
Yet there were tales told in the barrack-yards and under canvas of thelittle Amie du Drapeau that had a gentler side. Of how softly she wouldtouch the wounded; of how deftly she would cure them. Of how carelesslyshe would dash through under a raking fire, to take a draught of waterto a dying man. Of how she had sat by an old Grenadier's death-couch, tosing to him, refusing to stir, though it was a fete at Chalons, andshe loved fetes as only a French girl can. Of how she had ridden twentyleagues on a saddleless Arab horse, to fetch the surgeon of the Spahisto a Bedouin perishing in the desert of shot-wounds. Of how she had sentevery sou of her money to her mother, so long as that mother lived--abrutal, drunk, vile-tongued old woman, who had beaten her oftentimes,as the sole maternal attention, when she was but an infant. These thingswere told of Cigarette, and with a perfect truth. She was a thoroughscamp, but a thorough soldier, as she classified herself. Her own sexwould have seen no good in her; but her comrades-at-arms could and did.Of a surety, she missed virtues that women prize; but, not less of asurety, had she caught some that they miss.
Singing her refrain, on she dashed now, swift as a greyhound, light asa hare; glancing here and glancing there as she bounded over thepicturesque desolation of the Cashbah; it was just noon, and there werefew could brave the noon-heat as she did; it was very still; there wasonly from a little distance the roll of the French kettle-drums wherethe drummers of the African regiments were practicing. "Hola!" criedCigarette to herself, as her falcon-eyes darted right and left, and,like a chamois, she leaped down over the great masses of Turkish ruins,cleared the channel of a dry water-course, and alighted just in frontof a Chasseur d'Afrique, who was sitting alone on a broken fragmentof white marble, relic of some Moorish mosque, whose delicate columns,crowned with wind-sown grasses, rose behind him, against the deepintense blue of the cloudless sky.
He was sitting thoughtfully enough, almost wearily, tracing figures inthe dry sand of the soil with the point of his scabbard; yet he had allthe look about him of a brilliant French soldier, of one who, moreover,had seen hot and stern service. He was bronzed, but scarcely looked soafter the red, brown, and black of the Zouaves and the Turcos, forhis skin was naturally very fair, the features delicate, the eyes verysoft--for which M. Tata had growled contemptuously, "a woman's face"--along, silken chestnut beard swept over his chest; and his figure, as heleaned there in the blue and scarlet and gold of the Chasseurs' uniform,with his spurred heel thrust into the sand, and his arm resting on hisknee, was, as Cigarette's critical eye told her, the figure of a superbcavalry rider; light, supple, long of limb, wide of chest, with everysinew and nerve firm-knit as links of steel. She glanced at his hands,which were very white, despite the sun of Algiers and the labors thatfall to a private of Chasseurs.
"Beau lion!" she thought, "and noble, whatever he is."
But the best of blood was not new to her in the ranks of the Algerianregiments; she had known so many of them--those gilded butterflies ofthe Chaussee d'Antin, those lordly spendthrifts of the vieille roche,who had served in the battalions of the demi-cavalry, or the squadronsof the French Horse, to be thrust, nameless and unhonored, into asand-hole hastily dug with bayonets in the hot hush of an African night.
She woke him unceremoniously from his reverie, with a challenge to wine.
"Ah, ha! Tata Leroux says you are English; by the faith, he must beright, or you would never sit musing there like an owl in the sunlight!Take a draught of my burgundy; bright as rubies. I never sell badwines--not I! I know better than to drink them myself."
He started and rose; and, before he took the little wooden drinking-cup,bowed to her, raising his cap with a grave, courteous obeisance; a bowthat had used to be noted in throne-rooms for its perfection of grace.
"Ah, ma belle, is it you?" he said wearily. "You do me much honor."
Cigarette gave a little petulant twist to the tap of her wine-barrel.She was not used to that style of salutation. She half liked it--halfresented it. It made her wish, with an impatient scorn for the wish,that she knew how to read and had not her hair cut short like a boy's--aweakness the little vivandiere had never been visited
with before.
"Morbleu!" she said pettishly. "You are too fine for us mon brave. Inwhat country, I should wonder, does one learn such dainty ceremony asthat?"
"Where should one learn courtesies, if not in France?" he answeredwearily. He had danced with this girl-soldier the night before at aguinguette ball, seeing her for the first time, for it was almost thefirst time he had been in the city since the night when he hadthrown the dice, and lost ten Napoleons and the Bedouins to Claude deChanrellon; but his thoughts were far from her in this moment.
"Ouf! You have learnt carte and tierce with your tongue!" criedCigarette, provoked to receive no more compliment than that. Fromgenerals and staff officers, as from drummers and trumpeters, she wasaccustomed to flattery and wooing, luscious as sugared chocolate, andardent as flirtation, with a barrack flavor about it, commonly is; shewould, as often as not, to be sure, finish it with the butt-end of herpistol, or the butt-end of some bit of stinging sarcasm, but still, forall that, she liked it, and resented its omission. "They say you areEnglish, but I don't believe it; you speak too soft, and you sound thedouble L's too well. A Spaniard?"
"Do you find me so devout a Catholic that you think so?"
She laughed. "A Greek, then?"
"Still worse. Have you seen me cheat at cards?"
"An Austrian? You waltz like a White Coat!"
He shook his head.
She stamped her little foot into the ground--a foot fit for a model,with its shapely military boot; spurred, too, for Cigarette rode like acircus-rider.
"Say what you are, then, at once."
"A soldier of France. Can you wish me more?"
For the first time her eyes flashed and softened--her one love was thetricolor.
"True!" she said simply. "But you were not always a soldier of France?You joined, they say, twelve years ago. What were you before then?"
She here cast herself down in front of him, and, with her elbows onthe sand, and her chin on her hands, watched him with all the frankcuriosity and unmoved nonchalance imaginable, as she launched thequestion point-blank.
"Before!" he said slowly. "Well--a fool."
"You belonged in the majority, then!" said Cigarette, with a piquancemade a thousand times more piquant by the camp slang she spoke in."You should not have had to come into the ranks, mon ami;majorities--specially that majority--have very smooth sailinggenerally!"
He looked at her more closely, though she wearied him.
"Where have you got your ironies, Cigarette? You are so young."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Bah! one is never young, and always young in camps. Young? Pardieu!When I was four I could swear like a grenadier, plunder like a prefet,lie like a priest, and drink like a bohemian."
Yet--with all that--and it was the truth, the brow was so open under theclose rings of the curls, the skin so clear under the sun-tan, the mouthso rich and so arch in its youth!
"Why did you come into the service?" she went on, before he had a chanceto answer her. "You were born in the Noblesse--bah! I know an aristocratat a glance! Now many of those aristocrats come; shoals of them; but itis always for something. They all come for something; most of themhave been ruined by the lionnes, a hundred million of francs gone ina quarter! Ah, bah! what blind bats the best of you are! They havegambled, or bet, or got into hot water, or fought too many duels orcaused a court scandal, or something; all the aristocrats that come toAfrica are ruined. What ruined you, M. l'Aristocrat?"
"Aristocrat? I am none. I am a Corporal of the Chasseurs."
"Diable! I have known a Duke a Corporal! What ruined you?"
"What ruins most men, I imagine--folly."
"Folly, sure enough!" retorted Cigarette, with scornful acquiescence.She had no patience with him. He danced so deliciously, he looked sosuperb, and he would give her nothing but these absent answers. "Wisdomdon't bring men who look as you look into the ranks of the volunteersfor Africa. Besides, you are too handsome to be a sage!"
He laughed a little.
"I never was one, that's certain. And you are too pretty to be a cynic."
"A what?" She did not know the word. "Is that a good cigar you have?Give me one. Do women smoke in your old country?"
"Oh, yes--many of them."
"Where is it, then?"
"I have no country--now."
"But the one you had?"
"I have forgotten I ever had one."
"Did it treat you ill, then?"
"Not at all."
"Had you anything you cared for in it?"
"Well--yes."
"What was it? A woman?"
"No--a horse."
He stooped his head a little as he said it, and traced more figuresslowly in the sand.
"Ah!"
She drew a short, quick breath. She understood that; she would only havelaughed at him had it been a woman; Cigarette was more veracious thancomplimentary in her estimate of her own sex.
"There was a man in the Cuirassiers I knew," she went on softly,"loved a horse like that;--he would have died for Cossack--but he wasa terrible gambler, terrible. Not but what I like to play myself. Well,one day he played and played till he was mad, and everything was gone;and then in his rage he staked the only thing he had left. Staked andlost the horse! He never said a word; but he just slipped a pistol inhis pocket, went to the stable, kissed Cossack once--twice--thrice--andshot himself through the heart."
"Poor fellow!" murmured the Chasseur d'Afrique, in his chestnut beard.
Cigarette was watching him with all the keenness of her falcon eyes; "hehad gambled away a good deal too," she thought. "It is always the sameold story with them."
"Your cigars are good, mon lion," she said impatiently, as she sprangup; her lithe, elastic figure in the bright vivandiere uniform standingout in full relief against the pearly gray of the ruined pillars, thevivid green of the rank vegetation, and the intense light of the noon."Your cigars are good, but it is more than your company is! If you hadbeen as dull as this last night, I would not have danced a single turnwith you in the cancan!"
And with a bound to which indignation lent wings like a swallow's, theFriend of the Flag, insulted and amazed at the apathy with which heradvances to friendship had been received, dashed off at her topmostspeed, singing all the louder out of bravado. "To have nothing moreto say to me after dancing with me all night!" thought Cigarette, withfierce wrath at such contumely, the first neglect the pet of the Spahishad ever experienced.
She was incensed, too, that she had been degraded into that momentarywish that she knew how to read and looked less like a boy--just becausea Chasseur with white hands and silent ways had made her a grave bow!She was more incensed still because she could not get at his history,and felt, despite herself, a reluctance to bribe him for it with thosecajoleries whose potency she had boasted to Tata Leroux. "Let him takecare!" muttered the soldier-coquette passionately, in her little whiteteeth; so small and so pearly, though they had gripped a bridle tightbefore then, when each hand was filled with a pistol. "Let him takecare! If he offend me there are five hundred swords that will thrustcivility into him, five hundred shots that will teach him the cost ofdaring to provoke Cigarette!"
En route through the town her wayward way took the pretty brunetteFriend of the Flag as many devious meandering as a bird takes in asummer's day flight, when it stops here for a berry, there for agrass seed, here to dip its beak into cherries, there to dart aftera dragon-fly, here to shake its wings in a brook, there to poise on alily-bell.
She loitered in a thousand places, for Cigarette knew everybody; shechatted with a group of Turcos, she emptied her barrel for someZouaves, she ate sweetmeats with a lot of negro boys, she boxed a littledrummer's ear for slurring over the "r'lin tintin" at his practice, shedrank a demi-tasse with some officers at a cafe; she had ten minutes'pistol-shooting, where she beat hollow a young dandy of the Guides whohad come to look at Algiers for a week, and made even points with oneof the first shots of the "Cavalry a p
ied," as the Algerian antithesisruns. Finally she paused before the open French window of a snow-whitevilla, half-buried in tamarisk and orange and pomegranate, with thedeep-hued flowers glaring in the sun, and a hedge of wild cactusfencing it in; through the cactus she made her way as easily as a rabbitburrows; it would have been an impossibility to Cigarette to enter byany ordinary means; and balancing herself lightly on the sill for asecond, stood looking in at the chamber.
"Ho, M. le Marquis! the Zouaves have drunk all my wine up; fill me mykeg with yours for once--the very best burgundy, mind. I'm half afraidyour cellar will hurt my reputation."
The chamber was very handsome, hung and furnished in the very best Parisfashion, and all glittering with amber and ormolu and velvets; in ithalf a dozen men--officers of the cavalry--were sitting over their noonbreakfast, and playing at lansquenet at the same time. The table wascrowded with dishes of every sort, and wines of every vintage; and thefragrance of their bouquet, the clouds of smoke, and the heavy scent ofthe orange blossom without, mingled together in an intense perfume. Hewhom she addressed, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, laughed, and looked up.
"Ah, is it thee, my pretty brunette? Take what thou wantest out of theice pails."
"The best growths?" asked Cigarette, with the dubious air and caution ofa connoisseur.
"Yes!" said M. le Marquis, amused with the precautions taken with hiscellar, one of the finest in Algiers. "Come in and have some breakfast,ma belle. Only pay the toll."
Where he sat between the window and the table he caught her in his armsand drew her pretty face down; Cigarette, with the laugh of a saucychild, whisked her cigar out of her mouth and blew a great cloud ofsmoke in his eyes. She had no particular fancy for him, though she hadfor his wines; shouts of mirth from the other men completed the Marquis'discomfiture, as she swayed away from him, and went over to the otherside of the table, emptying some bottles unceremoniously into herwine-keg; iced, ruby, perfumy claret that she could not have boughtanywhere for the barracks.
"Hola!" cried the Marquis, "thou art not generally so coy with thykisses, petite."
Cigarette tossed her head.
"I don't like bad clarets after good! I've just been with your Corporal,'Bel-a-faire-peur'; you are no beauty after him, M. le Colonel."
Chateauroy's face darkened; he was a colossal-limbed man, whose bone wasiron, and whose muscles were like oak-fibers; he had a dark, keen headlike an eagle's; the brow narrow, but very high, looking higher becausethe close-cut hair was worn off the temples; thin lips hidden by heavycurling mustaches, and a skin burned black by long African service.Still he was fairly handsome enough not to have muttered so heavy anoath as he did at the vivandiere's jest.
"Sacre bleu! I wish my corporal were shot! One can never hear the lastof him."
Cigarette darted a quick glance at him. "Oh, ho; jealous, mon brave!"thought her quick wits. "And why, I wonder?"
"You haven't a finer soldier in your Chasseurs, mon cher; don't wish himshot, for the good of the service," said the Viscount de Chanrellon, whohad now a command of his own in the Light Cavalry of Algiers. "Pardieu!If I had to choose whether I'd be backed by 'Bel-a-faire-peur,' or bysix other men in a skirmish, I'd choose him, and risk the odds."
Chateauroy tossed off his burgundy with a contemptuous impatience.
"Diable! That is the exaggerated nonsense one always hears about thisfellow--as if he were a second Roland, or a revivified Bayard! I seenothing particular in him, except that he's too fine a gentleman for theranks."
"Fine? ah!" laughed Cigarette. "He made me bow this morning like achamberlain; and his beard is like carded silk, and he has such woman'shands, mon Dieu! But he is a croc-mitaine, too."
"Rather!" laughed Claude de Chanrellon, as magnificent a soldier himselfas ever crossed swords. "I said he would eat fire the very minute heplayed that queer game of dice with me years ago. I wish I had himinstead of you, Chateauroy; like lightning in a charge; and yet the veryman for a dangerous bit of secret service that wants the softness of apanther. We all let our tongues go too much, but he says so little--justa word here, a word there--when one's wanted--no more; and he's thedevil's own to fight."
The Marquis heard the praise of his Corporal, knitting his heavy brows;it was evident the private was no favorite with him.
"The fellow rides well enough," he said, with an affectation ofcarelessness; "there--for what I see--is the end of his marvels. I wishyou had him, Claude, with all my soul."
"Oh, ha!" cried Chanrellon, wiping the Rhenish off his tawny mustaches,"he should have been a captain by this if I had. Morbleu! He is asplendid sabreur--kills as many men to his own sword as I could myself,when it comes to a hand-to-hand fight; breaks horses in like magic;rides them like the wind; has a hawk's eye over open country; obeys likeclockwork; what more can you want?"
"Obeys! Yes!" said the Colonel of Chasseurs, with a snarl. "He'd obeywithout a word if you ordered him to walk up to a cannon's mouth, andbe blown from it; but he gives you such a d----d languid grand seigneurglance as he listens that one would think he commanded the regiment."
"But he's very popular with your men, too?"
"Monsieur, the worst quality a corporal can have. His idea ofmaintaining discipline is to treat them to cognac and give themtobacco."
"Pardieu! Not a bad way, either, with our French fire-eaters. He knowsthem that he has to deal with; that brave fellow. Your squadrons wouldgo to the devil after him."
The Colonel gave a grim laugh.
"I dare say nobody knows the way better."
Cigarette, flirting with the other officers, drinking champagne by greatglassfuls, eating bonbons from one, sipping another's soup, pullingthe limbs of a succulent ortolan to pieces with a relish, and devouringtruffles with all the zest of a bon-vivant, did not lose a word, andcatching the inflection of Chateauroy's voice, settled with her ownthoughts that "Bel-a-faire-peur" was not a fair field or a smooth coursewith his Colonel. The weather-cock heart of the little "Friend of theFlag" veered round, with her sex's common custom, to the side that wasthe weakest.
"Dieu de Dieu, M. le Colonel!" she cried, while she ate M. le Colonel'sfoie gras with as little ceremony and as much enjoyment as would beexpected from a young plunderer accustomed to think a meal all thebetter spiced by being stolen "by the rules of war"--"whatever elseyour handsome Corporal is, he is an aristocrat. Ah, ha! I know thearistocrats--I do! Their touch is so gentle, and their speech isso soft, and they have no slang of the camp, and yet they are suchdiablotins to fight and eat steel, and die laughing, all so quiet andnonchalant. Give me the aristocrats--the real thing, you know. Not theginger-cakes, just gilt, that are ashamed of being honest bread--but theold blood like Bel-a-faire-peur."
The Colonel laughed, but restlessly; the little ingrate had aimed at asore point in him. He was of the First Empire Nobility, and he wasweak enough, though a fierce, dauntless iron-nerved soldier, to bediscontented with the great fact that his father had been a hero ofthe Army of Italy, and scarce inferior in genius to Massena, becauseimpatient of the minor one that, before strapping on a knapsack tohave his first taste of war under Custine, the Marshal had been but apostilion at a posting inn in the heart of the Nivernais.
"Ah, my brunette!" he answered with a rough laugh, "have you takenmy popular Corporal for your lover? You should give your old friendswarning first, or he may chance to get an ugly spit on a saber."
The Amie du Drapeau tossed off her sixth glass of champagne. She feltfor the first time in her life a flush of hot blood on her brown, clearcheek, well used as she was to such jests and such lovers as these.
"Ma foi!" she said coolly. "He would be more likely to spit than bespitted if it came to a duel. I should like to see him in a duel; thereis not a prettier sight in the world when both men have science. As forfighting for me! Morbleau! I will thank nobody to have the impudence todo it, unless I order them out. Coqueline got shot for me, you remember;he was a pretty fellow, Coqueline, and they killed him so clumsily, thatthey dis
figured him terribly--it was quite a pity. I said then I wouldhave no more handsome men fight about me. You may, if you like, M. leBlack Hawk."
Which title she gave with a saucy laugh, hitting with a chocolate bonbonthe black African-burnt visage of the omnipotent chief she had theaudacity to attack. High or low, they were all the same to Cigarette.She would have "slanged" the Emperor himself with the self-samecoolness, and the Army had given her a passport of immunity so wide thatit would have fared ill with anyone who had ever attempted to bring thevivandiere to book for her uttermost mischief.
"By the way!" she went on, quick as thought, with her reckless,devil-may-care gayety. "One thing! Your Corporal will demoralize thearmy of Africa, monsieur!"
"He shall have an ounce of cold lead before he does. What in?"
"He will demoralize it," said Cigarette, with a sagacious shake of herhead. "If they follow his example we shan't have a Chasseur, or a Spahi,or a Piou-piou, or a Sapeur worth anything--"
"Sacre! What does he do?" The Colonel's strong teeth bit savagelythrough his cigar; he would have given much to have been able to finda single thing of insubordination or laxity of duty in a soldier whoirritated and annoyed him, but who obeyed him implicitly, and was one ofthe most brilliant "fire-eaters" of his regiment.
"He won't only demoralize the army," pursued the Cigarette, withvivacious eloquence, "but if his example is followed, he'll ruin thePrefets, close the Bureaux, destroy the Exchequer, beggar all theofficials, make African life as tame as milk and water, and rob you, M.le Colonel, of your very highest and dearest privilege!"
"Sacre bleu!" cried her hearers, as their hands instinctively soughttheir swords; "what does he do?"
Cigarette looked at them out of her arch black lashes.
"Why, he never thieves from the Arabs! If the fashion comes in, adieu toour occupation. Court-martial him, Colonel!"
With which sally Cigarette thrust her pretty soft curls back of hertemples, and launched herself into lansquenet with all the ardor ofa gambler and the vivacity of a child; her eyes flashing, her cheeksflushing, her little teeth set, her whole soul in a whirl of the game,made all the more riotous by the peals of laughter from her comradesand the wines that were washed down like water. Cigarette was a terriblelittle gamester, and had gaming made very easy to her, for it was thecreed of the Army that her losses never counted, but her gains were paidto her often double or treble. Indeed, so well did she play, and sowell did the goddess of hazard favor her, that she might have grown amillionaire on the fruits of her dice and her cards, but for this fact,that whatever the little Friend of the Flag had in her hands onehour was given away the next, to the first wounded soldier, or ailingveteran, or needy Arab woman that required the charity.
As much gold was showered on her as on Isabel of the Jockey Club; butCigarette was never the richer for it. "Bah!" she would say, when theytold her of her heedlessness, "money is like a mill, no good standingstill. Let it turn, turn, turn, as fast as ever it can, and the morebread will come from it for the people to eat."
The vivandiere was by instinct a fine political economist.