ll have bid the sailing
clouds pause in their floating passage because they came between royalty
and the sun. All the sovereigns of Europe would have awed Cigarette not
one whit more than a gathering of muleteers. "Allied sovereigns--bah!"
she would have said, "what did that mean in '15? A chorus of magpies
chattering over one stricken eagle!"

So she reined up before the Marshal and his staff, and the few great
personages whom Algeria could bring around them, as indifferently as she
had many a time reined up before a knot of grim Turcos, smoking under a
barrack-gate. _He_ was nothing to her; it was her Army that crowned her.
"The Generalissimo is the poppy-head, the men are the wheat; lay every
ear of the wheat low, and of what use is the towering poppy that blazed
so grand in the sun?" Cigarette would say with metaphorical unction,
forgetful, like most allegorists, that her fable was one-sided and
unjust in figure and deduction.

Nevertheless, despite her gay contempt for rank, her heart beat fast
under its golden-laced jacket as she reined up Etoile and saluted. In
that hot clear sun all the eyes of that immense host were fastened on
her, and the hour of her longing desire was come at last. France had
recognised that she had done greatly, and France, through the voice of
this, its chief, spoke to her--France, her beloved, and her
guiding-star, for whose sake the young brave soul within her would have
dared and have endured all things. There was a group before her, large
and brilliant, but at them Cigarette never looked; what she saw were the
sunburnt faces of her "children," of men who, in the majority, were old
enough to be her grandsires, who had been with her through so many
darksome hours, and whose black and rugged features lightened and grew
tender whenever they looked upon their Little One. For the moment she
felt giddy with sweet fiery joy; they were here to behold her thanked in
the name of France.

The Marshal, in advance of all his staff, touched his plumed hat and
bowed to his saddle-bow as he faced her. He knew her well by sight, this
pretty child of his Army of Africa, who had, before then, suppressed
mutiny like a veteran, and led the charge like a Murat--this kitten with
a lion's heart, this humming-bird with an eagle's swoop.

"Mademoiselle," he commenced, while his voice, well skilled to such
work, echoed to the farthest end of the long lines of troops, "I have
the honour to discharge to-day the