But, as regards the private in the Foreign Legion and his stay in Morocco, they took their revenge and let themselves go freely.

Major d’Astrignac had spoken.  Other officers, other comrades of Perenna’s, related what they had seen.  The reports and daily orders concerning him were published.  And what became known as “The Hero’s Idyll” began to take the form of a sort of record each page of which described the maddest and unlikeliest of facts.

At Mediouna, on the twenty-fourth of March, the adjutant, Captain Pollex, awarded Private Perenna four days’ cells on a charge of having broken out of camp past two sentries after evening roll call, contrary to orders, and being absent without leave until noon on the following day.  Perenna, the report went on to say, brought back the body of his sergeant, killed in ambush.  And in the margin was this note, in the colonel’s hand: 

“The colonel commanding doubles Private Perenna’s award, but mentions his name in orders and congratulates and thanks him.”

After the fight of Ber-Rechid, Lieutenant Fardet’s detachment being obliged to retreat before a band of four hundred Moors, Private Perenna asked leave to cover the retreat by installing himself in a kasbah.

“How many men do you want, Perenna?”

“None, sir.”

“What!  Surely you don’t propose to cover a retreat all by yourself?”

“What pleasure would there be in dying, sir, if others were to die as well as I?”

At his request, they left him a dozen rifles, and divided with him the cartridges that remained.  His share came to seventy-five.

The detachment got away without being further molested.  Next day, when they were able to return with reinforcements, they surprised the Moors lying in wait around the kasbah, but afraid to approach.  The ground was covered with seventy-five of their killed.

Our men drove them off.  They found Private Perenna stretched on the floor of the kasbah.  They thought him dead.  He was asleep!

He had not a single cartridge left.  But each of his seventy-five bullets had gone home.

What struck the imagination of the public most, however, was Major Comte d’Astrignac’s story of the battle of Dar-Dbibarh.  The major confessed that this battle, which relieved Fez at the moment when we thought that all was lost and which created such a sensation in France, was won before it was fought and that it was won by Perenna, alone!

At daybreak, when the Moorish tribes were preparing for the attack, Private Perenna lassoed an Arab horse that was galloping across the plain, sprang on the animal, which had no saddle, bridle, nor any sort of harness, and without jacket, cap, or arms, with his white shirt bulging out and a cigarette between his teeth, charged, with his hands in his trousers-pockets!

He charged straight toward the enemy, galloped through their camp, riding in and out among the tents, and then left it by the same place by which he had gone in.