She hid as her lawless courage would not have stooped to hide a sin,
had she chosen to commit one, this compassion which she, the young
condottiera of Algeria, showed with so tender a charity to the soldier
of Bonaparte. To him, moreover, her fiery, imperious voice was gentle
as the dove; her wayward, dominant will was pliant as the reed; her
contemptuous, skeptic spirit was reverent as a child's before an altar.
In her sight the survivor of the Army of Italy was sacred; sacred
the eyes which, when full of light, had seen the sun glitter on the
breastplates of the Hussars of Murat, the Dragoons of Kellerman, the
Cuirassiers of Milhaud; sacred the hands which, when nervous with youth,
had borne the standard of the Republic victorious against the gathered
Teuton host in Champagne; sacred the ears which, when quick to hear,
had heard the thunder of Arcola, of Lodi, of Rivoli, and, above even
the tempest of war, the clear, still voice of Napoleon; sacred the
lips which when their beard was dark in the fullness of manhood, had
quivered, as with a woman's weeping, at the farewell, in the spring
night, in the moonlit Cour des Adieux.
Cigarette had a religion of her own; and followed it more closely than
most disciples follow other creeds.
CHAPTER XXIV.
"MILADY AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS."
Early that morning, when the snowy cloud of pigeons were circling down
to take their daily alms from Cigarette, where her bright brown face
looked out from the lattice-hole, Cecil, with some of the roughriders
of his regiment, was sent far into the interior to bring in a string of
colts, bought of a friendly desert tribe, and destined to be shipped to
France for the Imperial Haras.
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