Oh, ha!  And how?—­by scampering fast on my mare, and asking for a squadron or two of my Spahis—­that was all.  If I had not done so much—­I, a soldier of Africa—­why, I should have deserved to have been shot like a cat—­bah! should I not?  It was not I who saved the battle.  Who was it?  It was a Chasseur d’Afrique, I tell you.  What did he do?  Why, this.  When his officers were all gone down, he rallied, and gathered his handful of men, and held the ground with them all through the day—­two—­four—­six—­eight—­ten hours in the scorch of the sun.  The Arbicos, even were forced to see that was grand; they offered him life if he would yield.  All his answer was to form his few horsemen into line as well as he could for the slain, and charge—­a last charge in which he knew not one of his troop could live through the swarms of the Arabs around them.  That I saw with my own eyes.  I and my Spahis just reached him in time.  Then who is it that saved the day, I pray you?—­I, who just ran a race for fun and came in at the fag-end of the thing, or this man who lived the whole day through in the carnage, and never let go of the guidon, but only thought how to die greatly?  I tell you, the Cross is his, and not mine.  Take it back, and give it where it is due.”

The Marshal listened, half amazed, half amused—­half prepared to resent the insult to the Empire and to discipline, half disposed to award that submission to her caprice which all Algeria gave to Cigarette.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, with a grave smile, “the honors of the Empire are not to be treated thus.  But who is this man for whom you claim so much?”

“Who is he?” echoed Cigarette, with all her fiery disdain for authority ablaze once more like brandy in a flame.  “Oh, ha!  Napoleon Premier would not have left his Marshals to ask that!  He is the finest soldier in Africa, if it be possible for one to be finer than another where all are so great.  They know that; they pick him out for all the dangerous missions.  But the Black Hawk hates him, and so France never hears the truth of all that he does.  I tell you, if the Emperor had seen him as I saw him on the field of Zaraila, his would have been the Cross, and not mine.”

“You are generous, my Little One.”

“No; I am just.”

Her brave eyes glowed in the sun, her voice rang as clear as a bell.  She raised her head proudly and glanced down the line of her army.  She was just—­that was the one virtue in Cigarette’s creed without which you were poltroon, or liar, or both.

She alone knew what neglect, what indifference, what unintentional, but none the less piercing, insults she had to avenge; she alone knew of that pain with which she had heard the name of his patrician rival murmured in delirious slumber after Zaraila; she alone knew of that negligent caress of farewell with which her lips had been touched as lightly as his hand caressed a horse’s neck or a bird’s wing.  But these did not weigh with her one instant to make her withhold the words that she deemed deserved; these did not balance against him one instant the pique and the pain of her own heart, in opposition to the due of his courage and his fortitude.