The roar of the voices sank somewhat; Cigarette had sprung aloft on a gun-carriage, and as the sun shone on her face it was brilliant with the scorn that lashed them like whips.

“Sang de Dieu!” fiercely swore a Zouave.  “Hounds, indeed!  If it were anyone but you!  When one has had nothing but a snatch of raw bullock’s meat, and a taste of coffee black with mud, for a week through, is one a hound because one hungers?”

“No,” said the orator from her elevation, and her eyes softened wonderfully.  In her heart she loved them so well, these wild, barbaric warriors that she censured—­“no, one is not a hound because one hungers; but one is not a soldier if one complains.  Well!  Biribi loved you; and I am here to do his will, to do his work.  He came laden; his back was loaded heavier than the mules’.  To the front, all of you, as I name you!  Petit-Pot-de-Terre, there is your old mother’s letter.  If she knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself whether you were dead or alive!  Fagotin!  Here is a bundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new—­only nine months old!  Potele!  Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and some tobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke!  Rafle!  Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not been stolen, so it will have no spice for you!  Racoleur!  Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; sharpen it on the Arbicos.  Poupard, Loup-terrible, Jean Pagnote, Pince-Maille, Louis Magot, Jules Goupil—­here!  There are your letters, your papers, your commissions.  Biribi forgot nothing.  As if you deserved to be worked for, or thought of!”

With which reproach Cigarette relieved herself of the certain pain that was left on her by the death of Biribi; she always found that to work yourself into a passion with somebody is the very best way in the world to banish an unwelcome emotion.

The men summoned by their camp-sobriquets, which were so familiar that they had, many of them, fairly forgotten their original names, rallied around her to receive the various packets with which a Tringlo is commonly charged by friends in the towns, or relatives away in France, for the soldiers of African brigades, and which, as well as his convoy of food and his budget of news, render him so precious and so welcome an arrival at an encampment.  The dead Biribi had been one of the lightest, brightest, cheeriest, and sauciest of the gay, kindly, industrious wanderers of his branch of the service; always willing to lead; always ready to help; always smoking, singing, laughing, chattering; treating his three mules as an indulgent mother her children; calling them Plick, Plack, et Plock, and thinking of Plick, Plack, et Plock far beyond himself at all times; a merry, busy, smiling, tender-hearted soul, who was always happy, trudging along the sunburned road, and caroling in his joyous voice chansonnettes and gaudrioles to the African flocks and herds, amid