She had danced the cancan; she had danced since sunset; she had danced
till she had tired out cavalrymen, who could go days and nights in the
saddle without a sense of fatigue, and made Spahis cry quarter, who
never gave it by any chance in the battlefield; and she was dancing now
like a little Bacchante, as fresh as if she had just sprung up from a
long summer day's rest. Dancing as she would dance only now and then,
when caprice took her, and her wayward vivacity was at the height, on
the green space before a tent full of general officers, on the bare
floor of a barrack-room, under the canvas of a fete-day's booth, or as
here in the music-hall of a Cafe.
Marshals had more than once essayed to bribe the famous little Friend
of the Flag to dance for them, and had failed; but, for a set of
soldiers--war-worn, dust-covered, weary with toil and stiff with
wounds--she would do it till they forgot their ills and got as
intoxicated with it as with champagne. For her gros bebees, if they
were really in want of it, she would do anything. She would flout a
star-covered general, box the ears of a brilliant aid, send killing
missiles of slang at a dandy of a regiment de famille, and refuse
point-blank a Russian grand duke; but to "mes enfants," as she was given
to calling the rough tigers and grisly veterans of the Army of Africa,
Cigarette was never capricious; however mischievously she would rally,
or contemptuously would rate them, when they deserved it.
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