ould laugh at her
caprices, as all the army did, or resent her insolence to his dignity.
But he was a good-natured man, and, what was better, a just one; and
Cigarette had judged rightly that the tale she had told would weigh well
with him to the credit side of his Corporal, and would not reach his
Colonel in any warped version that could give pretext for any fresh
exercise of tyranny over "Bel-a-faire-peur" under the title of
"discipline."

"Dieu de Dieu!" thought his champion as she made her way through the
gas-lit streets. "I swore to have my vengeance on him. It is a droll
vengeance, to save his life, and plead his cause with Vireflau! No
matter! One could not look on and let a set of Arbicos kill a good
lascar of France; and the thing that is just must be said, let it go as
it will against one's grain. Public Welfare before Private Pique!"

A grand and misty generality which consoled Cigarette for an abandonment
of her sworn revenge which she felt was a weakness utterly unworthy
of her, and too much like that inconsequent weathercock, that useless,
insignificant part of creation, those objects of her supreme derision
and contempt, those frivolous trifles which she wondered the good God
had ever troubled himself to make--namely, "Les Femmes."

"Hola, Cigarette!" cried the Zouave Tata, leaning out of a little
casement of the As de Pique as she passed it. "A la bonne heure, ma
belle! Come in; we have the devil's own fun here--"

"No doubt!" retorted the Friend of the Flag. "It would be odd if the
master-fiddler would not fiddle for his own!"

Through the window, and over the sturdy shoulders, in their canvas
shirt, of the hero Tata, the room was visible--full of smoke, through
which the lights glimmered like the sun in a fog; reeking with bad
wines, crowded with laughing, bearded faces, and the battered beauty of
women revelers, while on the table, singing with a voice Mario himself
could not have rivaled for exquisite sweetness, was a slender Zouave
gesticulating with the most marvelous pantomime, while his melodious
tones rolled out the obscenest and wittiest ballad that ever was caroled
in a guinguette.

"Come in, my pretty one!" entreated Tata, stretching out his brawn arms.
"You will die of laughing if you hear Gris-Gris to-night--such a song!"

"A pretty song, yes--for a pigsty!" said Cigarette, with a glance
into the chamber; and she shook his hand off her, and went on down the
street. A night or two be