t his blood like water to the
thirsty sands, whose thirst is never stilled, and goes up in the morning
sun to the combat, as though death were paradise that the Arbicos dream;
knowing the while, that no paradise waits save the crash of the hoof
through the throbbing brain, or the roll of the gun-carriage over the
writhing limb. That is glory. The misery that is heroism because France
needs it, because a soldier's honor wills it. That is glory. It is here
to-day in the hospital as it never is in the Cour des Princes, where the
glittering host of the marshals gather!"

[*] Having received ardent reproaches from field officers
and commanders of divisions for the injustice done their
services by this sentence, I beg to assure them that the
sentiment is Cigarette's--not mine. I should be very sorry
for an instant to seem to depreciate that "genius of
command" without whose guidance an army is but a rabble, or
to underrate that noblest courage which accepts the burden
of arduous responsibilities and of duties as bitter in
anxiety as they are precious in honor.

Her voice rang clear as a clarion; the warm blood burned in her bright
cheeks; the swift, fiery, pathetic eloquence of her nation moved her,
and moved strangely the hearts of her hearers; for though she could
neither read nor write, there was in Cigarette the germ of that power
which the world mistily calls genius.

There were men lying in that sick-chamber brutalized, crime-stained,
ignorant as the bullocks of the plains, and, like them, reared and
driven for the slaughter; yet there was not one among them to whom some
ray of light failed to come from those words, through whom some thrill
failed to pass as they heard them. Out yonder in the free air, in
the barrack court, or on the plains, the Little One would rate them
furiously, mock them mercilessly, rally them with the fist of a saber,
if they were mutinous, and lash them with the most pitiless ironies if
they were grumbling; but here, in the hospital, the Little One loved
them, and they knew it, and that love gave a flute-like music to the
passion of her voice.

Then she laughed, and drummed the rataplan again with her brass heel.

"All the same, one is not in paradise au grabat; eh, Pere Matou?" she
said curtly. She was half impatient of her own momentary lapse into
enthusiasm, and she knew the temper of her "children" as accurately as
a bugler knows the notes o