Englishman, I know of no being so cruel as Mirza; no being that
takes such delight in mere extermination. They used to call our
nobility, in the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV, cruel, but they did
not kill, they merely taxed. In the height of the ancient _regime_, it
was not good form to kill a peasant, because then the country had one
less taxpayer. The height of the art was to take all the peasant had
and then to induce him to set to work again. When he had earned another
surplus, his lord came and took it. France had an accomplished
nobility. England had a brutal one. The latter used to take all the
eggs out of the nest and then kill the hen. The French noble took all
the eggs but one or two, and spared the hen. He could rob a nest a
dozen times and his English contemporary could rob it but once."

"My friend," said the commandant, laughing, "you reassure me. When you
begin comparing England with France, I know that you have nothing of
importance at hand and that your mind is kicking up its heels in
vacation. You have a charming mind, my friend, but it has been
prostituted to the law. If you had been bred a soldier--"

He stopped, because the murmur of the square suddenly stopped. The
cessation of a familiar clamor is more startling than a sudden cry. The
two men ran to the window. The fires under the pots were still burning
and the square was light as day. At the opposite side, where the
caravan road debouched, three thousand white-robed Mussulmans stood,
silent. Above them the commandant and the lawyer could see the heads of
the six _spahis_, they and their horses silent. Beyond, were the heads
of many camels. The commandant threw up the sash. Across the silent
square came a woman's voice, speaking Arabic in the dialect of Ouled
Nail.

"That is Mirza," said the lawyer.

Then there came a man's voice, evidently in reply.

"That is Abdullah," said the lawyer.

"How can you distinguish at this distance?" asked the commandant.

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "While you are drilling your
soldiers," he said, "I am drilling myself. If a man yonder sneezes, I
can name his tribe. A sneeze, being involuntary, cannot be artificial,
and therefore it is the true index of race and character. Take the
Oriental Express any night from Paris to Vienna. If you will sit up
late enough and walk up and down the aisle, you may tell from the
sneezes and the coughs the nationality of the occupant of each berth. A
German sneezes