ets sounded, the salvoes
of artillery pealed out, the lances and the swords were carried up in
salute; on the ground rode the Marshal of France, who represented the
imperial will and presence, surrounded by his staff, by generals of
division and brigade, by officers of rank, and by some few civilian
riders. An aid galloped up to her where she stood with the corps of her
Spahis and gave her his orders. The Little One nodded carelessly, and
touched Etoile-Filante with the prick of the spur. Like lightning the
animal bounded forth from the ranks, rearing and plunging, and swerving
from side to side, while his rider, with exquisite grace and address,
kept her seat like the little semi-Arab that she was, and with a
thousand curves and bounds cantered down the line of the gathered
troops, with the west wind blowing from the far-distant sea, and fanning
her bright cheeks till they wore the soft, scarlet flush of the glowing
japonica flower. And all down the ranks a low, hoarse, strange,
longing murmur went--the buzz of the voices which, but that discipline
suppressed them, would have broken out in worshiping acclamations.

As carelessly as though she reined up before the Cafe door of the As
de Pique, she arrested her horse before the great Marshal who was the
impersonation of authority, and put her hand up in salute, with her
saucy, wayward laugh. He was the impersonation of that vast, silent,
awful, irresponsible power which, under the name of the Second Empire,
stretched its hand of iron across the sea, and forced the soldiers of
France down into nameless graves, with the desert sand choking their
mouths; but he was no more to Cigarette than any drummer-boy that
might be present. She had all the contempt for the laws of rank of
your thorough inborn democrat, all the gay, insouciant indifference to
station of the really free and untrammeled nature; and, in her sight, a
dying soldier, lying quietly in a ditch to perish of shot-wounds without
a word or a moan, was greater than all the Marshals glittering in their
stars and orders. As for impressing her, or hoping to impress her, with
rank--pooh! You might as well have bid the sailing clouds pause in their
floating passage because they came between royalty and the sun. All the
sovereigns of Europe would have awed Cigarette not one whit more than a
gathering of muleteers. "Allied sovereigns--bah!" she would have said,
"what did that mean in '15? A chorus of magpies chattering over