"Ah, Monsieur hears what a _babillarde_ it is. If she were given her own
way she would swear that I commanded the allied armies, and that I
blew up the Redan and stormed the Malakoff and captured Sebastopol all
alone!"

"Tell Monsieur what thou didst do," said the little woman, warmly.
"Tell him truly precisely what thou didst do, and then let him judge for
himself if what I have said be one bit less than thy due."

"And so bring Monsieur to know that I am a babbling old woman like
thyself?" He pinched her gently, and then settled himself back against
the cushion as though with the intention of giving himself wholly to the
enjoyment of his pipe: yet was there a look in his eyes that showed how
strong was the desire within him--the desire that is natural to every
brave and simple-minded old soldier--to tell the story of his honorable
scars. Even had I felt no desire to hear this story, not to have pressed
him to tell it would have been cruel. But little pressing was required.

"Since Monsieur is good enough to desire to hear what little there is to
tell," he said, "and to show him how foolish is this old woman of mine,
I will tell him the whole affair. It is a stupid nothing; but Monsieur
may be amused by the trick that was put upon me by those great
generals--yes, that certainly was droll.

"Our regiment, Monsieur, was the Twenty-seventh of the Line. It was
drawn almost wholly from the towns and villages in these parts:
Aries and Tarascon and Saint-Remy and Salon and Maillane and Chateau
Renard--there is the old chateau, over on the hill yonder, beside the
Durance--and Barbentane, that we shall see presently around the corner
of the hill. We all were _Provencaux_ together, and the men of the other
regiments of our division gave us the name of the Provence cats; though
why they gave us that foolish name I am sure they never knew any more
than we did ourselves. It was not because we were cowards, that I will
swear: our regiment did some very pretty fighting in its time, as any
one may know by reading the gazettes which were published in those days.

"Our division held Mont Sapoune--the French right, you know--facing the
Little Redan across the Carenage Ravine. It was early in the siege, and
we had only drawn our first parallel: close against the Selinghinsk
and Vallyrie redoubts, and partly covering the ground where we dug our
rifle-pits later on. But we were going ahead with our work fast, and
already we had thrown