rs les Generaux as in the Cric of the Loustics round
a camp-fire!

He was not there; he was leaning over the little wooden ledge of a
narrow window in an inner room, from which, one by one, some Spahis and
some troopers of his own tribu, with whom he had just been drinking such
burgundies and brandies as the place could give, had sloped away, one by
one, under the irresistible attraction of the vivandiere. An attraction,
however, that had not seduced them till all the bottles were emptied;
bottles more in number and higher in cost than was prudent in a corporal
who had but his pay, and that scant enough to keep himself, and who had
known what it was to find a roll of white bread and a cup of coffee a
luxury beyond all reach, and to have to sell his whole effects up to the
last thing in his haversack to buy a toss of thin wine when he was dying
of thirst, or a slice of melon when he was parching with African fever.

But prudence had at no time been his specialty, and the reckless life
of Algeria was not one to teach it, with its frank, brotherly fellowship
that bound the soldiers of each battalion, or each squadron, so closely
in a fraternity of which every member took as freely as he gave; its
gay, careless carpe diem camp-philosophy--the unconscious philosophy of
men who enjoyed, heart and soul, if they had a chance, because they
knew they might be shot dead before another day broke; and its swift and
vivid changes that made tirailleurs and troopers one hour rich as a king
in loot, in wine, in dark-eyed captives at the sacking of a tribe, to be
the next day famished, scorched, dragging their weary limbs, or urging
their sinking horses through endless sand and burning heat, glad to
sell a cartouche if they dared so break regimental orders, or to rifle
a hen-roost if they came near one, to get a mouthful of food; changing
everything in their haversack for a sup of dirty water, and driven to
pay with the thrust of a saber for a lock of wretched grass to keep
their beasts alive through the sickliness of a sirocco.

All these taught no caution to any nature normally without it; and
the chief thing that his regiment had loved in him whom they named
Bel-a-faire-peur from the first day that he had bound his red waist-sash
about his loins, and the officers of the bureau had looked over the new
volunteer, murmuring admiringly in their teeth "This gallant will do
great things!" had been that all he had was given, free as the win