A cunning, wizen head peered out at him from the gloom.

“Ah, ha!  Good-even, Corporal Victor!”

Cecil, at the words, crossed the sill and entered.

“Have you sold any?” he asked.  There was a slight constraint and hesitation in the words, as of one who can never fairly bend his spirit to the yoke of barter.

The little, hideous, wrinkled, dwarf-like creature, a trader in curiosities, grinned with a certain gratification in disappointing this lithe-limbed, handsome Chasseur.

“Not one.  The toys don’t take.  Daggers now, or anything made out of spent balls, or flissas one can tell an Arab story about, go off like wild-fire; but your ivory bagatelles are no sort of use, M. le Caporal.”

“Very well—­no matter,” said Cecil simply, as he paused a moment before some delicate little statuettes and carvings—­miniature things, carved out of a piece of ivory, or a block of marble the size of a horse’s hoof, such as could be picked up in dry river channels or broken off stray boulders; slender crucifixes, wreathes of foliage, branches of wild fig, figures of Arabs and Moors, dainty heads of dancing-girls, and tiny chargers fretting like Bucephalus.  They were perfectly conceived and executed.  He had always had a gift that way, though, in common with all his gifts, he had utterly neglected all culture of it, until, cast adrift on the world, and forced to do something to maintain himself, he had watched the skill of the French soldiers at all such expedients to gain a few coins, and had solaced many a dreary hour in barracks and under canvas with the toy-sculpture, till he had attained a singular art at it.  He had commonly given Rake the office of selling them, and as commonly spent all the proceeds on all other needs save his own.

He lingered a moment, with regret in his eyes; he had scarcely a sou in his pocket, and he had wanted some money sorely that night for a comrade dying of a lung-wound—­a noble fellow, a French artist, who, in an evil hour of desperation, had joined the army, with a poet’s temper that made its hard, colorless routine unendurable, and had been shot in the chest in a night-skirmish.

“You will not buy them yourself?” he asked at length, the color flushing in his face; he would not have pressed the question to save his own life from starving, but Leon Ramon would have no chance of fruit or a lump of ice to cool his parched lips and still his agonized retching, unless he himself could get money to buy those luxuries that are too splendid and too merciful to be provided for a dying soldier, who knows so little of his duty to his country as to venture to die in his bed.

“Myself!” screeched the dealer, with a derisive laugh.  “Ask me to give you my whole stock next!  These trumperies will lie on hand for a year.”

Cecil went out of the place without a word; his thoughts were with Leon Ramon, and the insolence scarce touched him.  “How shall I get him the ice?” he wondered.  “God! if I had only one of the lumps that used to float in our claret cup!”