Silence reigned in the tent, beyond whose first division, screened by a
heavy curtain of goat's hair, the beautiful young Djelma played with
her only son, a child of three or four summers; the Sheik lay mute, the
Djouad and Marabouts around never spoke in his presence unless their
lord bade them, and the Chasseur was stretched motionless, his elbow
resting on a cushion of Morocco fabric, and his eyes looking outward at
the restless, changing movement of the firelit, starlit camp.
After the noise, the mirth, the riotous songs, and the gay, elastic good
humor of his French comrades, the silence and the calm of the Emir's
"house of hair" were welcome to him. He never spoke much himself; of
a truth, his gentle, immutable laconism was the only charge that his
comrades ever brought against him. That a man could be so brief in
words, while yet so soft in manner, seemed a thing out of all nature to
the vivacious Frenchmen; that unchanging stillness and serenity in one
who was such a reckless, resistless croc-mitaine, swift as fire in the
field, was an enigma that the Cavalry and the Demi-cavalry of Algeria
never solved. His corps would have gone after him to the devil, as
Claude de Chanrellon had averred; but they would sometimes wax a little
impatient that he would never grow communicative or thread many phrases
together, even over the best wine which ever warmed the hearts of its
drinkers or loosened all rein from their lips.
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