snowy turban and olive
beauty bewitched half the women of Algeria; who himself affected to
neglect his conquests, with a supreme contempt for those indulgences,
but who would have been led out and shot rather than forego the personal
adornings for which his adjutant and his capitaine du bureau growled
unceasing wrath at him with every day that shone.

There was Pouffer-de-Rire, a little Tringlo, the wittiest, gayest,
happiest, sunniest-tempered droll in all the army; who would sing the
camp-songs so joyously through a burning march that the whole of the
battalions would break into one refrain as with one throat, and press on
laughing, shouting, running, heedless of thirst, or heat, or famine, and
as full of monkey-like jests as any gamins.

There was En-ta-maboull, so nicknamed from his love for that
unceremonious slang phrase--a Zouave who had the history of a Gil Blas
and the talent of a Crichton; the morals of an Abruzzi brigand and
the wit of a Falstaff; aquiline-nosed, eagle-eyed, black-skinned as an
African, with adventures enough in his life to outvie Munchausen; with
a purse always penniless, as the camp sentence runs; who thrust his men
through the body as coolly as others kill wasps; who roasted a shepherd
over a camp-fire for contumacy in concealing Bedouin where-abouts; yet
who would pawn his last shirt at the bazaar to help a comrade in debt,
and had once substituted himself for, and received fifty blows on the
loins in the stead of his sworn friend, whom he loved with that love of
David for Jonathan which, in Caserne life, is readier found than in Club
life.

There was Pattes-du-Tigre, a small, wiry, supple-limbed fire-eater, with
a skin like a coal and eyes that sparkled like the live coal's flame; a
veteran of the Joyeux; who could discipline his roughs as a sheepdog
his lambs, and who had one curt martial law for his detachment; brief
as Draco's, and trimmed to suit either an attack on the enemy or the
chastisement of a mutineer, lying in one single word--"Fire."

There was Barbe-Grise, a grisly veteran of Zephyrs, who held the highest
repute of any in his battalion for rushing on to a foe with a foot speed
that could equal the canter of an Arab's horse; for having stood alone
once the brunt of thirty Bedouins' attack, and ended by beating them
back, though a dozen spearheads were launched into his body and his
pantalons garances were filled with his own blood; and for framing
a matchless system of