And in that moment there was an intense
stillness; the Army crowned as its bravest and its best a woman-child in
the springtime of her girlhood.
Then Cigarette laid her hand on the Cross that had been the dream of her
years since she had first seen the brazen glisten of the eagles above
her wondering eyes of infancy, and loosened it from above her heart, and
stretched her hand out with it to the great Chief.
"M. le Marshal, this is not for me."
"Not for you! The Emperor bestows it----"
Cigarette saluted with her left hand, still stretching to him the
decoration with the other.
"It is not for me--not while I wear it unjustly."
"Unjustly! What is your meaning? My child, you talk strangely. The gifts
of the Empire are not given lightly."
"No; and they shall not be given unfairly. Listen." The color had
flushed back, bright and radiant, to her cheeks; her eyes glanced with
their old daring; her contemptuous, careless eloquence returned, and her
voice echoed, every note distinct as the notes of a trumpet-call, down
the ranks of the listening soldiery. "Hark you! The Emperor sends me
this Cross; France thanks me; the Army applauds me. Well, I thank them,
one and all. Cigarette was never yet ungrateful; it is the sin of
the coward. But I say I will not take what is unjustly mine, and this
preference to me is unjust. I saved the day at Zaraila? Oh, ha! And
how?--by scampering fast on my mare, and asking for a squadron or two
of my Spahis--that was all.
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