were of it now. Only to-day, at an
inspection, the accidentally broken saddle-girth of a boy-conscript
had furnished pretext for a furious reprimand, a volley of insolent
opprobrium hurled at himself, under which he had had to sit mute in his
saddle, with no other sign that he was human beneath the outrage than
the blood that would, despite himself, flush the pale bronze of his
forehead. His thoughts were on it now.

"There are many losses that are bitter enough," he mused; "but there is
not one so bitter as the loss of the right to resent!"

A whirlwind of laughter, so loud that it drowned the music of the shrill
violins and thundering drums, echoed through the rooms and shook him
from his reverie.

"They are bons enfants," he thought, with a half smile, as he listened;
"they are more honest in their mirth, as in their wrath, than we ever
were in that old world of mine."

Amid the shouts, the crash, the tumult, the gay, ringing voice of
Cigarette rose distinct. She had apparently paused in her dancing to
exchange one of those passes of arms which were her specialty, in the
Sabir that she, a child of the regiments of Africa, had known as her
mother tongue.

"You call him a misanthrope?" she cried disdainfully. "And you have been
drinking at his expense, you rascal?"

The grumbled assent of the accused was inaudible.

"Ingrate!" pursued the scornful, triumphant voice of the Vivandiere;
"you would pawn your mother's grave-clothes! You would eat your
children, en fricassee! You would sell your father's bones for a draught
of brandy!"

The screams of mirth redoubled; Cigarette's style of withering eloquence
was suited to all her auditors' tastes, and under the chorus of laughs
at his cost, her infuriated adversary plucked up courage and roared
forth a defiance.

"White hands and a brunette's face are fine things for a soldier. He
kills women--he kills women with his lady's grace!"

"He does not pull their ears to make them give him their money, and beat
them with a stick if they don't fry his eggs fast enough, as you do,
Barbe-Grise," retorted the contemptuous tones of the champion of the
absent. "White hands, morbleu! Well, his hands are not always in other
people's pockets as yours are!"

This forcible recrimination is in high relish in the Caserne; the
screams of mirth redoubled. Barbe-Grise was a redoubtable authority whom
the wildest dare-devil in his brigade dared not contradict, and he was
getting the