"When we are at it, monsieur," returned the Chasseur. "I only wish we
had more."

"Of course. Are you in need of recruits?"

"They all want to come to us and to the Zouaves," smiled Chanrellon,
surveying the figure of the one who addressed him, with a keen sense of
its symmetry and its sinew. "Still, a good sword brings its welcome. Do
you ask seriously, monsieur?"

The bearded Arabs smoking their long pipes, the little piou-piou
drowning his mortification in some curacoa, the idlers reading the
"Akbah" or the "Presse," the Chasseurs lounging over their drink, the
ecarte players lost in their game, all looked up at the newcomer. They
thought he looked a likely wearer of the dead honors of Rire-pour-tout.

He did not answer the question literally, but came over from the doorway
and seated himself at the little marble table opposite Claude, leaning
his elbows on it.

"I have a doubt," he said. "I am more inclined to your foes."

"Dieu de Dieu!" exclaimed Chanrellon, pulling at his tawny mustaches. "A
bold thing to say before five Chasseurs."

He smiled, a little contemptuously, a little amusedly.

"I am not a croc-mitaine, perhaps; but I say what I think, with little
heed of my auditors, usually."

Chanrellon bent his bright brown eyes curiously on him. "He is a
croc-mitaine," he thought. "He is not to be lost."

"I prefer your foes," went on the other, quite quietly, quite
listlessly, as though the glittering, gas-lit cafe were not full of
French soldiers. "In the first place, they are on the losing side; in
the second, they are the lords of the soil; in the third, they live as
free as air; and in the fourth, they have undoubtedly the right of the
quarrel!"

"Monsieur!" cried the Chasseurs, laying their hands on their swords,
fiery as lions. He looked indolently and wearily up from under the long
lashes of his lids, and went on, as though they had not spoken.

"I will fight you all, if you like, as that worthy of yours,
Rire-pour-tout, did, but I don't think it's worth while," he said
carelessly, where he leaned over the marble table. "Brawling's bad
style; we don't do it. I was saying, I like your foes best; mere matter
of taste; no need to quarrel over it--that I see. I shall go into
their service or into yours, monsieur--will you play a game of dice to
decide?"

"Decide?--but how?"

"Why--this way," said the other, with the weary listlessness of one who
cares not two straws how things turn. "If I