"
"Hola, Cigarette!" cried the Zouave Tata, leaning out of a little
casement of the As de Pique as she passed it. "A la bonne heure, ma
belle! Come in; we have the devil's own fun here--"
"No doubt!" retorted the Friend of the Flag. "It would be odd if the
master-fiddler would not fiddle for his own!"
Through the window, and over the sturdy shoulders, in their canvas
shirt, of the hero Tata, the room was visible--full of smoke, through
which the lights glimmered like the sun in a fog; reeking with bad
wines, crowded with laughing, bearded faces, and the battered beauty of
women revelers, while on the table, singing with a voice Mario himself
could not have rivaled for exquisite sweetness, was a slender Zouave
gesticulating with the most marvelous pantomime, while his melodious
tones rolled out the obscenest and wittiest ballad that ever was caroled
in a guinguette.
"Come in, my pretty one!" entreated Tata, stretching out his brawn arms.
"You will die of laughing if you hear Gris-Gris to-night--such a song!"
"A pretty song, yes--for a pigsty!" said Cigarette, with a glance
into the chamber; and she shook his hand off her, and went on down the
street. A night or two before a new song from Gris-Gris, the best tenor
in the whole army, would have been paradise to her, and she would have
vaulted through the window at a single bound into the pandemonium. Now,
she did not know why, she found no charm in it.
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