dinal virtues don't send anybody, I guess, into
African service. And yet, pardieu, I don't know. What fellows I have
known! I have had men among my Zephyrs--and they were the wildest
insubordinates too--that would have ruled the world! I have had more
wit, more address, more genius, more devotion, in some headlong scamp
of a loustic than all the courts and cabinets would furnish. Such lives,
such lives, too, morbleu!"

And he drained his absinthe thoughtfully, musing on the marvelous
vicissitudes of war, and on the patrician blood, the wasted wit, the
Beaumarchais talent, the Mirabeau power, the adventures like a page of
fairy tale, the brains whose strength could have guided a scepter, which
he had found and known, hidden under the rough uniform of a Zephyr;
buried beneath the canvas shirt of a Roumi; lost forever in the wild,
lawless escapades of rebellious insubordinates, who closed their days
in the stifling darkness of the dungeons of Beylick, or in some obscure
skirmish, some midnight vedette, where an Arab flissa severed the cord
of the warped life, and the death was unhonored by even a line in the
Gazettes du Jour.

"Faith!" laughed Chanrellon, regardless of the General's observation,
"if we all published our memoirs, the world would have a droll book.
Dumas and Terrail would be beat out of the field. The real recruiting
sergeants that send us to the ranks would be soon found to be--"

"Women!" growled the General.

"Cards," sighed the Colonel.

"Absinthe," muttered another.

"A comedy that was hissed."

"The spleen."

"The dice."

"The roulette."

"The natural desire of humanity to kill or to get killed!"

"Morbleu!" cried Chanrellon, as the voices closed, "all those mischiefs
beat the drum, and send volunteers to the ranks, sure enough; but the
General named the worst. Look at that little Cora; the Minister of War
should give her the Cross. She sends us ten times more fire-eaters
than the Conscription does. Five fine fellows--of the vieille roche
too--joined to-day, because she has stripped them of everything, and
they have nothing for it but the service. She is invaluable, Cora."

"And there is not much to look at in her either," objected a captain,
who commanded Turcos. "I saw her when our detachment went to show in
Paris. A baby face, innocent as a cherub--a soft voice--a shape that
looks as slight and as breakable as the stem of my glass--there is the
end!"

The Colonel of Tirailleurs lau