I know this man that you talk of
'pitying.' Well, I saw him at Zaraila three weeks ago; he had drawn up
his men to die with them rather than surrender and yield up the guidon;
I dragged him half dead, when the field was won, from under his horse,
and his first conscious act was to give the drink that I brought him to
a wretch who had thieved from him. Our life here is hell upon earth to
such as he, yet none ever heard a lament wrung out of him; he is gone
to the chances of death to-night as most men go to their mistresses'
kisses; he is a soldier Napoleon would have honored. Such a one is not
to have the patronage of a Milady Corona, nor the pity of a stranger of
England. Let the first respect him; let the last imitate him!"
And Cigarette, having pronounced her defense and her eulogy with the
vibrating eloquence of some orator from a tribune, threw her champagne
goblet down with a crash, and, breaking through the arms outstretched to
detain her, forced her way out despite them, and left her hosts alone in
their lighted tent.
"C'est Cigarette!" said the Chef d'Escadron, with a shrug of his
shoulders, as of one who explained, by that sentence, a whole world of
irreclaimable eccentricities.
"A strange little Amazon!" said their guest. "Is she in love with this
Victor, that I have offended her so much with his name?"
The Major shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know that, monsieur," answered one. "She will defend a man in
his absence, and rate him to his face most soundly.
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