ds, to
any who asked or needed.

The all was slender enough. Unless he live by the ingenuity of his own
manufactures, or by thieving or intimidating the people of the country,
a French soldier has but barren fare and a hard struggle with hunger and
poverty; and it was the one murmur against him, when he was lowest in
the ranks, that he would never follow the fashion, in wringing out
by force or threat the possessions of the native population. The one
reproach, that made his fellow soldiers impatient and suspicious of
him, was that he refused any share in those rough arguments of blows
and lunges with which they were accustomed to persuade every victim
they came nigh to yield them up all such treasures of food, or drink, or
riches, from sheep's liver and couscoussou, to Morocco carpets and skins
of brandy and coins hid in the sand, that the Arabs might be so unhappy
as to own in their reach. That the fattest pullet of the poorest Bedouin
was as sacred to him as the banquet of his own Chef d'Escadron, let him
be ever so famished after the longest day's march, was an eccentricity,
and an insult to the usages of the corps, for which not even his daring
and his popularity could wholly procure him pardon.

But this defect in him was counterbalanced by the lavishness with which
his pay was lent, given, or spent in the very moment of its receipt. If
a man of his tribu wanted anything, he knew that Bel-a-faire-peur would
offer his last sous to aid him, or, if money were all gone, would sell
the last trifle he possessed to get enough to assist his comrade. It
was a virtue which went far to vouch for all others in the view of his
lawless, open-handed brethren of the barracks and the Camp, and made
them forgive him many moments when the mood of silence and the habit
of solitude, not uncommon with him, would otherwise have incensed a
fraternity with whom to live apart is the deadliest charge, and the
sentence of excommunication against any who dare to provoke it.

One of those moods was on him now.

He had had a drinking bout with the men who had left him, and had
laughed as gayly and as carelessly, if not as riotously, as any of them
at the wild mirth, the unbridled license, the amatory recitations, and
the Bacchic odes in their lawless sapir, that had ushered the night in
while his wines unlocked the tongues and flowed down the throats of the
fierce Arab-Spahis and the French cavalrymen. But now he leaned out of
the casement,