ill you like it? your lungs, your
heart, your brain? It is quite a matter of choice;'--and whichever
they chose, he shot there. Le pauvre Rire-pour-tout! He was always
good-natured."

"And did he never meet his match?" asked a sous-officier of the line.

The speaker looked down on the piou-piou with superb contempt, and
twisted his mustaches. "Monsieur! how could he? He was a Chasseur."

"But if he never met his match, how did he die?" pursued the irreverent
piou-piou--a little wiry man, black as a berry, agile as a monkey, tough
and short as a pipe-stopper.

The magnificent Chasseur laughed in his splendid disdain. "A piou-piou
never killed him, that I promise you. He spitted half a dozen of you
before breakfast, to give him a relish. 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! We were out yonder" (and
he nodded his handsome head outward to where the brown, seared
plateaux and the Kabyl mountains lay). "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. I shall get my hand out.' For
Rire-pour-tout, as the army knows, somehow or other, generally potted
his man every day, and he missed it terribly. Well, what did he do? He
rode off one morning and found out the Arab camp, and he waved a white
flag for a parley. He didn't dismount, but he just faced the Arabs and
spoke to their Sheik. 'Things are slow,' he said to them. 'I have come
for a little amusement. Set aside six of your best warriors, and I'll
fight them one after another for the honor of France and a drink of
brandy to the conqueror.' They demurred; they thought it unfair to him
to have six to one. 'Ah!' he laughs, 'you have heard of Rire-pour-tout,
and you are afraid!' That put their blood up: they said they would fight
him before all his Chasseurs. '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 mustach