ght, on
the green space before a tent full of general officers, on the bare
floor of a barrack-room, under the canvas of a fete-day's booth, or as
here in the music-hall of a Cafe.

Marshals had more than once essayed to bribe the famous little Friend
of the Flag to dance for them, and had failed; but, for a set of
soldiers--war-worn, dust-covered, weary with toil and stiff with
wounds--she would do it till they forgot their ills and got as
intoxicated with it as with champagne. For her gros bebees, if they
were really in want of it, she would do anything. She would flout a
star-covered general, box the ears of a brilliant aid, send killing
missiles of slang at a dandy of a regiment de famille, and refuse
point-blank a Russian grand duke; but to "mes enfants," as she was given
to calling the rough tigers and grisly veterans of the Army of Africa,
Cigarette was never capricious; however mischievously she would rally,
or contemptuously would rate them, when they deserved it.

And she was dancing for them now.

Her soft, short curls all fluttering, her cheeks all bright with a
scarlet flush, her eyes as black as night and full of fire; her gay
little uniform, with its scarlet and purple, making her look like a
fuchsia bell tossed by the wind to and fro, ever so lightly, on its
delicate, swaying stem; Cigarette danced with the wild grace of an
Almeh, of a Bayadere, of a Nautch girl--as untutored and instinctive
in her as its song to a bird, as its swiftness to a chamois. To see
Cigarette was like drinking light, fiery wines, whose intoxication was
gay as mischief, and sparkling as themselves. All the warmth of Africa,
all the wit of France, all the bohemianism of the Flag, all the caprices
of her sex, were in that bewitching dancing. Flashing, fluttering,
circling, whirling; glancing like a saber's gleam, tossing like a
flower's head, bounding like an antelope, launching like an arrow,
darting like a falcon, skimming like a swallow; then for an instant
resting as indolently, as languidly, as voluptuously, as a water-lily
rests on the water's breast--Cigarette en Bacchante no man could resist.

When once she abandoned herself to the afflatus of the dance delirium,
she did with her beholders what she would. The famous Cachucha,
that made the reverend cardinals of Spain fling off their pontifical
vestments and surrender themselves to the witchery of the castanets and
the gleam of the white, twinkling feet, was never more i