nswered with an angry flush, stealing a malevolent glance at
John. "And I do not sing to please myself."

John doubted this; but being by nature quick to forgive and repent a
quarrel, he answered with some grace: "I was annoyed, Sergeant
Barboux, and said what I thought would hurt rather than what was
just. You possess, indeed, a charming voice, and I regret to have
insulted it."

"You mean it?" asked Barboux, still red in the face, but patently
delighted.

"So entirely that I shall not pardon myself until you have done us
the favour to sing."

The sergeant held out his hand. "And that's very handsomely said!
Given or taken, an apology never goes astray between brave fellows.
And, after all," he added, "I had, if I remember, something the
better of that argument! You really wish me to sing, then?"

"To be sure I do," Jack assured him, smiling.

Barboux cleared his throat, wagged his head once or twice impassively
and trolled out:

"Belle meuniere, en passant par ici,
Ne suis-je-t'y pas eloigne d'ltalie. . . ."

From this graceful opening the song declined into the grossest filth;
and it was easy to see, watching his face, why McQuarters, without
understanding a word of French, had accused him of singing
"sculduddery." John, though disgusted, could not help being amused
by a performance which set him in mind now of a satyr and now of a
mincing schoolgirl--_vert galant avec un sourire de cantatrice_--
lasciviousness blowing affected kisses in the intervals of licking
its chops. At the conclusion he complimented the singer, with a
grave face.

Barboux bowed. "It has, to say true, a little more marrow in it than
le Chameau's _rossignols_ and _rosiers_. Hola, Chameau; the
Englishman here agrees that you sing well, but that your matter is
watery stuff. You must let me teach you one or two of my songlets--"

"Pardon, m'sieur, mais ca sera un peu trop--trop vif; c'est-a-dire
pour moi," stammered the little hunchback.

Barboux guffawed. The idea of le Chameau as a ladies' man tickled
him hugely, and he tormented the patient fellow with allusions to it,
and to his deformity, twenty times a day.

And yet the sergeant was not ill-natured--until you happened to cross
him, when his temper became damnable--but merely a big, vain,
boisterous lout. John, having taken his measure, found it easy to
study him philosophically and even to be passably amused by him.
But he made himself, it must be owned, a