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"Hold!" cried Cigarette, interrupting herself in her chant in honor of the attributes of war, as the Tringlo's mules which she was driving, some three weeks after the fray of Zaraila, stopped, by sheer force of old habit, in the middle of a green plateau on the outskirts of a camp pitched in its center, and overlooked by brown, rugged scarps of rock, with stunted bushes on their summits, and here and there a maritime pine clinging to their naked slopes.
"Your chain is here, madame, though broken, I regret to see," he continued, as he took the little box from his coat and handed it to her. She took it, and thanked him, without, for the moment, opening the enamel case as she motioned him to a seat at a little distance from her own. "You have been in terrible scenes since I saw you last," she continued. "The story of Zaraila reached us.
Others, who knew him better, thought that it was the loss of his brother-exile which weighed on him, and made all the scene around him full of pain. None approached him; but while they feasted in their tents, making the celebration of Zaraila equal to the Jour de Mazagran, he sat alone over a picket-fire on the far outskirts of the camp. His heart was sick within him.
The young chief listened gravely; by the glistening of his keen, black eyes, he was surprised and moved, though, true to his teaching, he showed neither emotion as he answered her. "Who is this Frank for whom you do this thing?" "He is the warrior to whom you offered life on the field of Zaraila because his courage was as the courage of gods."
Amid the mirth, the noise, the festivity, which reigned throughout the camp as the men surrendered themselves to the enjoyment of the largesses of food and of wine allotted to them by their Marshal's command in commemoration of Zaraila, one alone remained apart; silent and powerless to rouse himself even to the forced semblance, the forced endurance, of their mischief and their pleasure.
He was still somewhat weakened by the wounds of Zaraila; he had been bruised and exhausted by the skirmish of the past night; he was weary and heart-broken; but he did not yield to his longing to sink down on the sands, and let his life ebb out; he held patiently onward through the infinite misery of the passage.
I have seen his patience, his obedience, his long-suffering beneath insults that would have driven any other to revolt and murder. I have seen him I have told you how at Zaraila, thinking never of death or life, only of our Flag, that he has made his own, and under which he has been forced to lead the life of a galley slave " "The finer soldier he be, the less pardonable his offense."
She was known throughout the length and the breadth of the land to the Arabs; she was neither child nor woman to them; she was but the soldier who had brought up the French reserve at Zaraila; she was but the foe who had seen them defeated, and ridden down with her comrades in their pursuit in twice a score of vanquished, bitter, intolerably shameful days.
"Dieu de Dieu! he loves you. When he was down with his wounds after Zaraila, he said so; but he never knew what he said, and he never knew that I heard him. You are like the women of his old world; though through you he got treated like a dog, he loves you!" "Of whom do you venture to speak?"
Take Bel-a-faire-peur, then. 'Who is that? asked the general; he would have sent out of camp anybody but Cigarette for the interruption. 'Mon General, said I, 'the Arabs asked that, too, the other day, at Zaraila. 'What! he cried, 'the man Victor who held the ground with his Chasseurs? I know a fine soldier.
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