You must not let your gracious pity
be moved by such fellows as these troopers of mine; they are the most
ingenious rascals in the world, and know as well how to produce a
dramatic effect in your presence as they do how to drink and to swear
when they are out of it."
"Very possibly," she said, with an indolent indifference; "but that man
was no actor, and I never saw a gentleman if he have not been one."
"Like enough," answered the Marquis. "I believe many 'gentlemen' come
into our ranks who have fled their native countries and broken all laws
from the Decalogue to the Code Napoleon. So long as they fight well,
we don't ask their past criminalities. We cannot afford to throw away a
good soldier because he has made his own land too hot to hold him."
"Of what country is your Corporal, then?"
"I have not an idea. I imagine his past must have been something very
black, indeed, for the slightest trace of it has never, that I know
of, been allowed to let slip from him. He encourages the men in every
insubordination, buys their favor with every sort of stage trick, thinks
himself the finest gentleman in the whole brigades of Africa, and ought
to have been shot long ago, if he had had his real deserts."
She let her glance dwell on him with a contemplation that was half
contemptuous amusement, half unexpressed dissent.
"I wonder he has not been, since you have the ruling of his fate," she
said, with a slight smile lingering about the proud, rich softness of
her lips.
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