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Updated: June 13, 2025
Well, you know they spoke of promoting him for it, and he would have run up all the grades like a squirrel, and died a Kebir, I dare say. What did he do to prevent it? Why, went that escapade into Oran disguised as a Dervish, and go the prison instead." "To prevent it? Not purposely?" "Purposely, mon Caporal," said Petit Picpon, with a sapient nod that spoke volumes.
"Ma cantche!" he thought, as he stood on his head, with his legs at an acute angle in the air, in position very favored by him for moments of reflection he said his brain worked better upside down. "Ma cantche! What a weakness, what a weakness! What remorse to have yielded to it! Beneath you, Picpon utterly beneath you. Just because that ci-devant says such follies please him in us!"
I owe him more than I'll ever pay, and I'll kill the Kebir himself afore I'll insult him that way. So say little to him about the Spahi, mon Caporal. He loves you well, does your Rac." "Well, indeed! Good God! what nobility!" Picpon glanced at him; then, with the tact of his nation, glided away and busied himself teaching Flick-Flack to shoulder and present arms, the weapon being a long stick.
Petit Picpon had but one drawback to this military career he was always in insubordination; the old gamin dare-devilry was not dead in him, and never would die; and Petit Picpon accordingly was perpetually a hero in the field and a ragamuffin in the times of peace.
"Very little, mon Caporal!" said Picpon eagerly. "A mere nothing a bagatelle! Run a Spahi through the stomach, that is all. I don't think the man is so much as dead, even!" "I hope not, indeed. When will you cease this brawling among yourselves? A soldier's blade should never be turned upon men of his own army. How did it happen?" "A woman! They quarreled about a little fruit-seller.
Picpon was quite in love with his joke; it was only a good joke in his sight; and, indeed, men need to live as hardly as an African soldier lives, to estimate the full temptation that gold can have when you have come to look on a cat as very good eating, and to have nothing to gnaw but a bit of old shoe-leather through the whole of the long hours of a burning day of fatigue-duty; and to estimate, as well, the full width and depth of the renunciation that made him mutter now so valorously, "Dame!
"Send me to Beylick, if you like, Corporal," he said sturdily; "I was in wrath for you not for myself." Cecil was infinitely more touched than he dared, for the sake of discipline, for sake of the speaker himself, to show; but his glance dwelt on Petit Picpon with a look that the quick, black, monkey-like eyes of the rebel were swift to read. "I know," he said gravely.
Petit Picpon looked as crestfallen as one of his fraternity could; he knew well enough that what he had said could get him twenty blows of the stick, if his corporal chose to give him up to judgment; but he had too much of the Parisian in him still not to have his say, though he should be shot for it.
Such men as care to pleasure me will best do so in making my duty light by their own self-control and obedience to the rules of their service." He led his horse away, and Petit Picpon went on an errand he had been sent to do in the streets for one of the officers.
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