meat, and a taste of coffee black with mud, for a week through, is one a
hound because one hungers?"

"No," said the orator from her elevation, and her eyes softened
wonderfully. In her heart she loved them so well, these wild, barbaric
warriors that she censured--"no, one is not a hound because one hungers;
but one is not a soldier if one complains. Well! Biribi loved you; and
I am here to do his will, to do his work. He came laden; his back was
loaded heavier than the mules'. To the front, all of you, as I name you!
Petit-Pot-de-Terre, there is your old mother's letter. If she knew as
much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself
whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is a bundle of Paris
newspapers for you; they are quite new--only nine months old! Potele!
Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she
knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle! Here is a little money
come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no
spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton,
with a knife as a souvenir; sharpen it on the Arbicos. Poupard,
Loup-terrible, Jean Pagnote, Pince-Maille, Louis Magot, Jules
Goupil--here! There are your letters, your papers, your commissions.
Biribi forgot nothing. As if you deserved to be worked for, or thought
of!"

With which reproach Cigarette relieved herself of the certain pain that
was left on her by the death of Biribi; she always found that to work
yourself into a passion with somebody is the very best way in the world
to banish an unwelcome emotion.

The men summoned by their camp-sobriquets, which were so familiar that
they had, many of them, fairly forgotten their original names, rallied
around her to receive the various packets with which a Tringlo is
commonly charged by friends in the towns, or relatives away in France,
for the soldiers of African brigades, and which, as well as his convoy
of food and his budget of news, render him so precious and so welcome an
arrival at an encampment. The dead Biribi had been one of the lightest,
brightest, cheeriest, and sauciest of the gay, kindly, industrious
wanderers of his branch of the service; always willing to lead; always
ready to help; always smoking, singing, laughing, chattering; treating
his three mules as an indulgent mother her children; calling them Plick,
Plack, et Plock, and thinking of Plick, Plack, et Plock far beyond
himself at all times