A flower, bright-hued and
sun-fed, glancing with the dews of youth now, when it had just unclosed,
in all its earliest beauty, but already soiled and tainted by the bed
from which it sprang, and doomed to be swept away with time, scentless
and loveless, down the rapid, noxious current of that broad, black
stream of vice on which it now floated so heedlessly.
Even now his thoughts drifted from her almost before the sound of the
horse's hoofs had died where he sat on a loose pile of stones, with the
lifeless limbs of the Arab at his feet.
"Who was it in my old life that she is like?" he was musing. It was the
deep-blue, dreaming haughty eyes of the Princesse that he was bringing
back to memory, not the brown, mignon face that had been so late close
to his in the light of the moon.
Meanwhile, on his good gray, Cigarette rode like a true Chasseur
herself. She was used to the saddle, and would ride a wild desert colt
without stirrup or bridle; balancing her supple form now on one foot,
now on the other, on the animal's naked back, while they flew at full
speed. Not so fantastically, but full as speedily, she dashed down into
the city, scattering all she met with right and left, till she rode
straight up to the barracks of the Chasseurs d'Afrique. At the entrance,
as she reined up, she saw the very person she wanted, and signed him
to her as carelessly as if he were a conscript instead of that powerful
officer, Francois Vireflau, captain and adjutant.
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