The little, hideous, wrinkled, dwarf-like creature, a trader in
curiosities, grinned with a certain gratification in disappointing this
lithe-limbed, handsome Chasseur.

"Not one. The toys don't take. Daggers now, or anything made out of
spent balls, or flissas one can tell an Arab story about, go off like
wild-fire; but your ivory bagatelles are no sort of use, M. le Caporal."

"Very well--no matter," said Cecil simply, as he paused a moment before
some delicate little statuettes and carvings--miniature things, carved
out of a piece of ivory, or a block of marble the size of a horse's
hoof, such as could be picked up in dry river channels or broken off
stray boulders; slender crucifixes, wreathes of foliage, branches of
wild fig, figures of Arabs and Moors, dainty heads of dancing-girls, and
tiny chargers fretting like Bucephalus. They were perfectly conceived
and executed. He had always had a gift that way, though, in common with
all his gifts, he had utterly neglected all culture of it, until, cast
adrift on the world, and forced to do something to maintain himself, he
had watched the skill of the French soldiers at all such expedients to
gain a few coins, and had solaced many a dreary hour in barracks and
under canvas with the toy-sculpture, till he had attained a singular
art at it. He had commonly given Rake the office of selling them, and as
commonly spent all the proceeds on all other needs save his own.

He lingered a moment, with regret in his eyes; he had scarcely a sou in
his pocket, and he had wanted some money sorely that night for a comrade
dying of a lung-wound--a noble fellow, a French artist, who, in an evil
hour of desperation, had joined the army, with a poet's temper that made
its hard, colorless routine unendurable, and had been shot in the chest
in a night-skirmish.

"You will not buy them yourself?" he asked at length, the color flushing
in his face; he would not have pressed the question to save his own life
from starving, but Leon Ramon would have no chance of fruit or a lump of
ice to cool his parched lips and still his agonized retching, unless he
himself could get money to buy those luxuries that are too splendid and
too merciful to be provided for a dying soldier, who knows so little of
his duty to his country as to venture to die in his bed.

"Myself!" screeched the dealer, with a derisive laugh. "Ask me to give
you my whole stock next! These trumperies will lie on hand for a year."