t hush of the nights of July, France welcomed
the Conqueror of Italy. And in that moment there was an intense
stillness; the Army crowned as its bravest and its best a woman-child in
the springtime of her girlhood.

Then Cigarette laid her hand on the Cross that had been the dream of her
years since she had first seen the brazen glisten of the eagles above
her wondering eyes of infancy, and loosened it from above her heart, and
stretched her hand out with it to the great Chief.

"M. le Marshal, this is not for me."

"Not for you! The Emperor bestows it----"

Cigarette saluted with her left hand, still stretching to him the
decoration with the other.

"It is not for me--not while I wear it unjustly."

"Unjustly! What is your meaning? My child, you talk strangely. The gifts
of the Empire are not given lightly."

"No; and they shall not be given unfairly. Listen." The color had
flushed back, bright and radiant, to her cheeks; her eyes glanced with
their old daring; her contemptuous, careless eloquence returned, and her
voice echoed, every note distinct as the notes of a trumpet-call, down
the ranks of the listening soldiery. "Hark you! The Emperor sends me
this Cross; France thanks me; the Army applauds me. Well, I thank them,
one and all. Cigarette was never yet ungrateful; it is the sin of
the coward. But I say I will not take what is unjustly mine, and this
preference to me is unjust. I saved the day at Zaraila? Oh, ha! And
how?--by scampering fast on my mare, and asking for a squadron or two
of my Spahis--that was all. If I had not done so much--I, a soldier of
Africa--why, I should have deserved to have been shot like a cat--bah!
should I not? It was not I who saved the battle. Who was it? It was
a Chasseur d'Afrique, I tell you. What did he do? Why, this. When his
officers were all gone down, he rallied, and gathered his
handful of men, and held the ground with them all through the
day--two--four--six--eight--ten hours in the scorch of the sun. The
Arbicos, even were forced to see that was grand; they offered him life
if he would yield. All his answer was to form his few horsemen into line
as well as he could for the slain, and charge--a last charge in which
he knew not one of his troop could live through the swarms of the Arabs
around them. That I saw with my own eyes. I and my Spahis just reached
him in time. Then who is it that saved the day, I pray you?--I, who just
ran a race for fun and came in at the f