The words were out, and Cigarette was reckless what she said; almost
unconscious, indeed, in the violence of the many emotions in her.
"The man who carves the toys you give your dog to break!" she answered
bitterly. "Dieu de Dieu! he loves you. When he was down with his wounds
after Zaraila, he said so; but he never knew what he said, and he never
knew that I heard him. You are like the women of his old world; though
through you he got treated like a dog, he loves you!"
"Of whom do you venture to speak?"
The cold, calm dignity of the question, whose very tone was a rebuke,
came strangely after the violent audacity of Cigarette's speech.
"Sacre bleu! Of him, I tell you, who was made to bring his wares to you
like a hawker. And you think it insult, I will warrant!--insult for
a soldier who has nothing but his courage, and his endurance, and
his heroism under suffering to ennoble him, to dare to love Mme. la
Princesse Corona! I think otherwise. I think that Mme. la Princesse
Corona never had a love of so much honor, though she has had princes and
nobles and all the men of her rank, no doubt, at her feet, through that
beauty that is like a spell!"
Hurried headlong by her own vehemence, and her own hatred for her rival,
which drove her to magnify the worth of the passion of which she was so
jealous, that she might lessen, if she could, the pride of her on whom
it was lavished, she never paused to care what she said, or heed what
its consequences might become.
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