. No soldier of
France needs it; that I promise you. I know this man that you talk of
'pitying.' Well, I saw him at Zaraila three weeks ago; he had drawn up
his men to die with them rather than surrender and yield up the guidon;
I dragged him half dead, when the field was won, from under his horse,
and his first conscious act was to give the drink that I brought him to
a wretch who had thieved from him. Our life here is hell upon earth to
such as he, yet none ever heard a lament wrung out of him; he is gone
to the chances of death to-night as most men go to their mistresses'
kisses; he is a soldier Napoleon would have honored. Such a one is not
to have the patronage of a Milady Corona, nor the pity of a stranger of
England. Let the first respect him; let the last imitate him!"

And Cigarette, having pronounced her defense and her eulogy with the
vibrating eloquence of some orator from a tribune, threw her champagne
goblet down with a crash, and, breaking through the arms outstretched to
detain her, forced her way out despite them, and left her hosts alone in
their lighted tent.

"C'est Cigarette!" said the Chef d'Escadron, with a shrug of his
shoulders, as of one who explained, by that sentence, a whole world of
irreclaimable eccentricities.

"A strange little Amazon!" said their guest. "Is she in love with this
Victor, that I have offended her so much with his name?"

The Major shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know that, monsieur," answered one. "She will defend a man in
his absence, and rate him to his face most soundly. Cigarette whirls
about like a little paper windmill, just as the breeze blows; but, as
the windmill never leaves its stick, so she is always constant to the
Tricolor."

Their guest said little more on the subject; in his own thoughts he was
bitterly resentful that, by the mention of this Chasseur's fortunes, he
should have brought in the name he loved so well--the purest, fairest,
haughtiest name in Europe--into a discussion with a vivandiere at a camp
dinner.

Chateauroy, throughout, had said nothing; he had listened in silence,
the darkness lowering still more heavily upon his swarthy features; only
now he opened his lips for a few brief words:

"Mon cher Duc, tell Madame not to waste the rare balm of her pity. The
fellow you inquire for was an outcast and an outlaw when he came to us.
He fights well--it is often a blackguard's virtue!"

His guest nodded and changed the subject; his impa