like water to the thirsty sands, whose thirst is never stilled, and goes up in the morning sun to the combat, as though death were paradise that the Arbicos dream; knowing the while, that no paradise waits save the crash of the hoof through the throbbing brain, or the roll of the gun-carriage over the writhing limb.  That is glory.  The misery that is heroism because France needs it, because a soldier’s honor wills it.  That is glory.  It is here to-day in the hospital as it never is in the Cour des Princes, where the glittering host of the marshals gather!”

[*] Having received ardent reproaches from field officers and commanders of divisions for the injustice done their services by this sentence, I beg to assure them that the sentiment is Cigarette’s—­not mine.  I should be very sorry for an instant to seem to depreciate that “genius of command” without whose guidance an army is but a rabble, or to underrate that noblest courage which accepts the burden of arduous responsibilities and of duties as bitter in anxiety as they are precious in honor.

Her voice rang clear as a clarion; the warm blood burned in her bright cheeks; the swift, fiery, pathetic eloquence of her nation moved her, and moved strangely the hearts of her hearers; for though she could neither read nor write, there was in Cigarette the germ of that power which the world mistily calls genius.

There were men lying in that sick-chamber brutalized, crime-stained, ignorant as the bullocks of the plains, and, like them, reared and driven for the slaughter; yet there was not one among them to whom some ray of light failed to come from those words, through whom some thrill failed to pass as they heard them.  Out yonder in the free air, in the barrack court, or on the plains, the Little One would rate them furiously, mock them mercilessly, rally them with the fist of a saber, if they were mutinous, and lash them with the most pitiless ironies if they were grumbling; but here, in the hospital, the Little One loved them, and they knew it, and that love gave a flute-like music to the passion of her voice.

Then she laughed, and drummed the rataplan again with her brass heel.

“All the same, one is not in paradise au grabat; eh, Pere Matou?” she said curtly.  She was half impatient of her own momentary lapse into enthusiasm, and she knew the temper of her “children” as accurately as a bugler knows the notes of the reveille—­knew that they loved to laugh even with the death-rattle in their throats, and with their hearts half breaking over a comrade’s corpse, would cry in burlesque mirth, “Ah, the good fellow!  He’s swallowed his own cartouche!”

“Paradise!” growled Pere Matou.  “Ouf!  Who wants that?  If one had a few bidons of brandy, now——­”

“Brandy?  Oh, ha! you are to be much more of aristocrats now than that!” cried Cigarette, with an immeasurable satire curling on her rosy piquant lips.  “The Silver Pheasants have taken to patronize you.  If I were you, I would not touch a glass, nor eat a fig; you will not, if you have the spirit of a rabbit.  You!  Fed like dogs with the leavings of her table—­pardieu!  That is not for soldiers of France!”