ey had gripped a bridle tight
before then, when each hand was filled with a pistol. "Let him take
care! If he offend me there are five hundred swords that will thrust
civility into him, five hundred shots that will teach him the cost of
daring to provoke Cigarette!"

En route through the town her wayward way took the pretty brunette
Friend of the Flag as many devious meandering as a bird takes in a
summer's day flight, when it stops here for a berry, there for a
grass seed, here to dip its beak into cherries, there to dart after
a dragon-fly, here to shake its wings in a brook, there to poise on a
lily-bell.

She loitered in a thousand places, for Cigarette knew everybody; she
chatted with a group of Turcos, she emptied her barrel for some
Zouaves, she ate sweetmeats with a lot of negro boys, she boxed a little
drummer's ear for slurring over the "r'lin tintin" at his practice, she
drank a demi-tasse with some officers at a cafe; she had ten minutes'
pistol-shooting, where she beat hollow a young dandy of the Guides who
had come to look at Algiers for a week, and made even points with one
of the first shots of the "Cavalry a pied," as the Algerian antithesis
runs. Finally she paused before the open French window of a snow-white
villa, half-buried in tamarisk and orange and pomegranate, with the
deep-hued flowers glaring in the sun, and a hedge of wild cactus
fencing it in; through the cactus she made her way as easily as a rabbit
burrows; it would have been an impossibility to Cigarette to enter by
any ordinary means; and balancing herself lightly on the sill for a
second, stood looking in at the chamber.

"Ho, M. le Marquis! the Zouaves have drunk all my wine up; fill me my
keg with yours for once--the very best burgundy, mind. I'm half afraid
your cellar will hurt my reputation."

The chamber was very handsome, hung and furnished in the very best Paris
fashion, and all glittering with amber and ormolu and velvets; in it
half a dozen men--officers of the cavalry--were sitting over their noon
breakfast, and playing at lansquenet at the same time. The table was
crowded with dishes of every sort, and wines of every vintage; and the
fragrance of their bouquet, the clouds of smoke, and the heavy scent of
the orange blossom without, mingled together in an intense perfume. He
whom she addressed, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, laughed, and looked up.

"Ah, is it thee, my pretty brunette? Take what thou wantest out of the
i