In the fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived a courage as daring as Danton’s, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud’s, a soul as aspiring as Napoleon’s.  Untaught, untutored, uninspired by poet’s words or patriot’s bidding, spontaneous as the rising and the blossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this child of the battle, the spirit of genius, the desire to live and to die greatly.  To be forever a beloved tradition in the army of her country, to have her name remembered in the roll-call; to be once shrined in the love and honor of France, Cigarette—­full of the boundless joys of life that knew no weakness and no pain; strong as the young goat, happy as the young lamb, careless as the young flower tossing on the summer breeze—­Cigarette would have died contentedly.  And now, living, some measure of this desire had been fulfilled to her, some breath of this imperishable glory had passed over her.  France had heard the story of Zaraila; from the Throne a message had been passed to her; what was far beyond all else to her, her own Army of Africa had crowned her, and thanked her, and adored her as with one voice, and wheresoever she passed the wild cheers rang through the roar of musketry, as through the silence of sunny air, and throughout the regiments every sword would have sprung from its scabbard in her defense if she had but lifted her hand and said one word—­“Zaraila!”

The Army looked on her with delight now.  In all that mute, still, immovable mass that stretched out so far, in such gorgeous array, there was not one man whose eyes did not turn on her, whose pride did not center in her—­their Little One, who was so wholly theirs, and who had been under the shadow of their Flag ever since the curls, so dark now, had been yellow as wheat in her infancy.  There was not one in all those hosts whose eyes did not turn on her with gratitude, and reverence, and delight in her as their own.

Not one; except where her own keen, rapid glance, far-seeing as the hawk’s, lighted on the squadrons of the Chasseurs d’Afrique, and found among their ranks one face, grave, weary, meditative, with a gaze that seemed looking far away from the glittering scene to a grave that lay unseen leagues beyond, behind the rocky ridge.

“He is thinking of the dead man, not of me,” thought Cigarette; and the first taint of bitterness entered into her cup of joy and triumph, as such bitterness enters into most cups that are drunk by human lips.  A whole army was thinking of her, and of her alone; and there was a void in her heart, a thorn in her crown, because one among that mighty mass—­one only—­gave her presence little heed, but thought rather of a lonely tomb among the desolation of the plains.