The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.  “While you are drilling your soldiers,” he said, “I am drilling myself.  If a man yonder sneezes, I can name his tribe.  A sneeze, being involuntary, cannot be artificial, and therefore it is the true index of race and character.  Take the Oriental Express any night from Paris to Vienna.  If you will sit up late enough and walk up and down the aisle, you may tell from the sneezes and the coughs the nationality of the occupant of each berth.  A German sneezes with all his might, and if there is a compatriot within hearing he says, ‘Gesundheit.’  An Italian sneezes as if it were a crime, with his hand over his face.”

“Hush,” said the commandant.

Out from the white-robed crowd came two forms, Mirza and the oukil.  Mirza held a paper in her hand.  They went to the nearest fire and Mirza gave the paper to the man with the green turban.  He read it, thought a moment, read it again, and then the two went back to the silent crowd by the mosque.  There was conversation, there were vehement exclamations which, if they had been in English, would have been oaths—­there was a sudden movement of the horses and the camels; the outskirts of the crowd surged and broke, and then, above their heads, flashed the sabres of the spahis.

The commandant went to the door.  “Corporal,” he said, “take your men to the mosque, join your comrades, and bring to me Abdullah, his wife, Mirza, and the oukil.”

The corporal saluted, gave an order, and the little troop trotted across the square.  The commandant closed the shutters of the window.

“I do not care to see the row,” he said, and he lit a cigarette.  But if he did not see the row, he heard it, for presently came the yelp and snarl of an Oriental mob.

“It is growing warm,” said the commandant.  “Hospitality cannot be lightly practised here.”

“Nor anywhere,” said the lawyer, who had resumed his cards; “because it is a virtue, and the virtues are out of vogue.  The only really successful life, as the world looks upon success now, is an absolutely selfish life.  It is the day of specialists, of men with one idea, one object, and the successful man is the one who permits nothing to come between him and his object.  Wife, children, honor, friendship, ease, all must give place to the grand pursuit; be it the gathering of wealth, the discovery of a disease germ, the culture of orchids, or the breeding of a honey-bee that works night and day.  Human life is too short to permit a man to do more than one thing well, and money is becoming so common that its possessors require the best of everything.”

“Old friend,” said the commandant, “you are a many-sided man, and yet you are one of the best lawyers in France.”

“You have said it,” exclaimed the lawyer; “one of the best, not the best.  The one thing I have earnestly striven for I have not attained.”