“Yes; she took plenty of cognac before she sang; that always clears her voice,” said a second.

“And I think that did her spirits good, shooting that Kabyl,” said a third.  “By the way, did he die?”

“N’sais pas, Loo-Loo’s a good aim.”

“Sac a papier, yes!  Rire-pour-tout taught her.”

“Ah!  There never was a shot like Rire-pour-tout.  When he went out, he always asked his adversary, ’Where will you like it? your lungs, your heart, your brain?  It is quite a matter of choice;’—­and whichever they chose, he shot there.  Le pauvre Rire-pour-tout!  He was always good-natured.”

“And did he never meet his match?” asked a sous-officier of the line.

The speaker looked down on the piou-piou with superb contempt, and twisted his mustaches.  “Monsieur! how could he?  He was a Chasseur.”

“But if he never met his match, how did he die?” pursued the irreverent piou-piou—­a little wiry man, black as a berry, agile as a monkey, tough and short as a pipe-stopper.

The magnificent Chasseur laughed in his splendid disdain.  “A piou-piou never killed him, that I promise you.  He spitted half a dozen of you before breakfast, to give him a relish.  How did Rire-pour-tout die?  I will tell you.”

He dipped his long mustaches into a beaker of still champagne.  Claude, Viscomte de Chanrellon, though in the ranks, could afford those luxuries.

“He died this way, did Rire-pour-tout!  Dieu de Dieu! a very good way too.  Send us all the like when our time comes!  We were out yonder” (and he nodded his handsome head outward to where the brown, seared plateaux and the Kabyl mountains lay).  “We were hunting Arabs, of course—­pot-shooting, rather, as we never got nigh enough to their main body to have a clear charge at them.  Rire-pour-tout grew sick of it.  ‘This won’t do,’ he said; ’here’s two weeks gone by, and I haven’t shot anything but kites and jackals.  I shall get my hand out.’  For Rire-pour-tout, as the army knows, somehow or other, generally potted his man every day, and he missed it terribly.  Well, what did he do?  He rode off one morning and found out the Arab camp, and he waved a white flag for a parley.  He didn’t dismount, but he just faced the Arabs and spoke to their Sheik.  ‘Things are slow,’ he said to them.  ’I have come for a little amusement.  Set aside six of your best warriors, and I’ll fight them one after another for the honor of France and a drink of brandy to the conqueror.’  They demurred; they thought it unfair to him to have six to one.  ‘Ah!’ he laughs, ’you have heard of Rire-pour-tout, and you are afraid!’ That put their blood up:  they said they would fight him before all his Chasseurs.  ‘Come, and welcome,’ said Rire-pour-tout; ‘and not a hair of your beards shall be touched except by me.’  So the bargain was made for an hour before sunset that night.  Mort de Dieu! that was a grand duel!”

He dipped his long mustaches again into another beaker of still.  Talking was thirsty work; the story was well known in all the African army, but the piou-piou, having served in China, was new to the soil.