It was a pleasure to him to know that; though he
knew also that every added moment spent under the sweet sovereignty
of her glance was so much added pain, so much added folly, to the
dream-like and baseless passion with which she had inspired him.
The trifling incident of the goat's rescue and the chain's trouvaille,
slight as they were, still were of service to him. They called him back
from the past to the present; they broke the stupor of suffering that
had fastened on him; they recalled him to the actual world about him in
which he had to fulfill his duties as a trooper of France.
It was almost noon when, under the sun-scorched branches of the pine
that stretched its somber fans up against the glittering azure of the
morning skies, he approached the gates of the Algerine house-of-call--a
study for the color of Gerome, with the pearly gray of its stone tints,
and the pigeons wheeling above its corner towers, while under the arch
of its entrance a string of mules, maize-laden, were guided; and on its
bench sat a French soldier, singing gayly songs of Paris while he cut
open a yellow gourd.
Cecil went within, and bathed, and dressed, and drank some of the thin,
cool wine that found its way thither in the wake of the French army.
Then he sat down for a while at one of the square, cabin-like holes
which served for casements in the tower he occupied, and, looking out
into the court, tried to shape his thoughts and plan his course.
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