nd so
well did the goddess of hazard favor her, that she might have grown a
millionaire on the fruits of her dice and her cards, but for this fact,
that whatever the little Friend of the Flag had in her hands one
hour was given away the next, to the first wounded soldier, or ailing
veteran, or needy Arab woman that required the charity.

As much gold was showered on her as on Isabel of the Jockey Club; but
Cigarette was never the richer for it. "Bah!" she would say, when they
told her of her heedlessness, "money is like a mill, no good standing
still. Let it turn, turn, turn, as fast as ever it can, and the more
bread will come from it for the people to eat."

The vivandiere was by instinct a fine political economist.

Meanwhile, where she had left him among the stones of the ruined mosque,
the Chasseur, whom they nicknamed Bel-a-faire-peur, in a double sense,
because of his "woman's face," as Tata Leroux termed it, and because
of the terror his sword had become through North Africa, sat motionless
with his right arm resting on his knee, and his spurred heel thrust into
the sand; the sun shining down unheeded in its fierce, burning glare on
the chestnut masses of his beard and the bright glitter of his uniform.

He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had had a dozen wounds cut over
his body by the Bedouin swords, in many and hot skirmishes; who had
waited through sultry African nights for the lion's tread, and had
fought the desert-king and conquered; who had ridden a thousand miles
over the great sand waste, and the boundless arid plains, and slept
under the stars with the saddle beneath his head, and his rifle in his
hand, all through the night; who had served, and served well, in fierce,
arduous, unremitting work, in trying campaigns and in close
discipline; who had blent the verve, the brilliance, the daring, the
eat-drink-and-enjoy-for-to-morrow-we-die of the French Chasseur, with
something that was very different, and much more tranquil.

Yet, though as bold a man as any enrolled in the French Service, he sat
alone here in the shadow of the column, thoughtful, motionless, lost in
silence.

In his left hand was a Galignani, six months old, and his eye rested on
a line in the obituary:

"On the 10th ult., at Royallieu, suddenly, the Right Hon. Denzil,
Viscount Royallieu; aged 90."

CHAPTER XVI.

CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE.

Vanitas vanitatum! The dust of death lies over the fallen altars of
Bubastis,