He hesitated a second,
where he lay at the opening of his tent, whom he should send with it.
His men were almost all half-dead with the sun-blaze. His glance
chanced to light in the distance on a soldier to whom he bore no
love--causelessly, but bitterly all the same. He had him summoned, and
eyed him with a curious amusement--Chateauroy treated his squadrons
with much the same sans-facon familiarity and brutality that a chief of
filibusters uses in his.
"So! you heed the heat so little, you give up your turn of water to a
drummer, they say?"
The Chasseur gave the salute with a calm deference. A faint flush passed
over the sun-bronze of his forehead. He had thought the Sidney-like
sacrifice had been unobserved.
"The drummer was but a child, mon Commandant."
"Be so good as to give us no more of those melodramatic acts!" said M.
le Marquis contemptuously. "You are too fond of trafficking in those
showy fooleries. You bribe your comrades for their favoritism too
openly. Ventre bleu! I forbid it--do you hear?"
"I hear, mon Colonel."
The assent was perfectly tranquil and respectful. He was too good a
soldier not to render perfect obedience, and keep perfect silence, under
any goad of provocation to break both.
"Obey then!" said Chateauroy savagely. "Well, since you love heat so
well, you shall take a flag of truce and my scroll to the Sidi Ilderim.
But tell me, first, what do you think of this capture?"
"It is not my place to give opinions, M.
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