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Updated: June 15, 2025
'Come, and welcome, said Rire-pour-tout; 'and not a hair of your beards shall be touched except by me. So the bargain was made for an hour before sunset that night. Mort de Dieu! that was a grand duel!" He dipped his long mustaches again into another beaker of still.
Rire-pour-tout sat like a rock, and lunge went his steel through the Bedouin's lung, before you could cry hola! a death-stroke, of course; Rire-pour-tout always killed: that was his perfect science. Another and another and another came, just as fast as the blood flowed. You know what the Arabs are vous autres?
"We were hunting Arabs, of course pot-shooting, rather, as we never got nigh enough to their main body to have a clear charge at them. Rire-pour-tout grew sick of it. 'This won't do, he said; 'here's two weeks gone by, and I haven't shot anything but kites and jackals.
Then the tawny cloud settled down a little, the sand mist cleared away, the Arab's saddle was empty but Rire-pour-tout sat like a rock. The old Chief bowed his head. 'It is over! Allah is great! And he knew his son lay there dead. Then we broke from the ranks, and we rushed to the place where the chargers and men were piled like so many slaughtered sheep.
How they wheel and swerve and fight flying, and pick up their saber from the ground, while their horse is galloping ventre a terre, and pierce you here and pierce you there, and circle round you like so many hawks? You know how they fought Rire-pour-tout then, one after another, more like devils than men. Mort de Dieu! it was a magnificent sight!
How did Rire-pour-tout die? I will tell you." He dipped his long mustaches into a beaker of still champagne. Claude, Viscomte de Chanrellon, though in the ranks, could afford those luxuries. "He died this way, did Rire-pour-tout! Dieu de Dieu! a very good way too. Send us all the like when our time comes!
That was how Rire-pour-tout died, piou-piou; laughing to the last. Sacre bleu! It was a splendid end; I wish I were sure of the like." And Claude de Chanrellon drank down his third beaker, for overmuch speech made him thirsty. The men around him emptied their glasses in honor of the dead hero.
Rire-pour-tout laughed such a gay, ringing laugh as the desert never had heard. 'Vive la France! he cried. 'And now bring me my toss of brandy. Then down headlong out of his stirrups he reeled and fell under his horse; and when we lifted him up there were two broken sword-blades buried in him, and the blood was pouring fast as water out of thirty wounds and more.
We were drawn up in line Horse, Foot, and Artillery Rire-pour-tout all alone, some way in advance; mounted, of course. The General and the Sheik had a conference; then the play began. There were six Arabs picked out the flower of the army all white and scarlet, and in their handsomest bravery, as if they came to an aouda. They were fine men diable! they were fine men.
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