“And I came without my vengeance!” she mused, in that oppressive noon, in that gray and lonely place, in that lofty tower-solitude, where there was nothing between her and the hot, hard, cruel blue of the heavens, vengeance looked the only thing that was left her; the only means whereby that void in her heart could be filled, that shame in her life be washed out.  To love! and to love a man who had no love for her, whose eyes only beheld another’s face, whose ears only thirsted for another’s voice!  Its degradation stamped her a traitress in her own sight—­traitress to her code, to her pride, to her country, to her flag!

And yet, at the core of her heart so tired a pang was aching!  She who had gloried in being the child of the whole people, the daughter of the whole army, felt lonely and abandoned, as though she were some bird which an hour ago had been flying in all its joy among its brethren and now, maimed with one shot, had fallen, with broken pinion and torn plumage, to lie alone upon the sand and die.

The touch of a bird’s wing brushing her hair brought the dreamy comparison to her wandering thoughts.  She started and lifted her head; it was a blue carrier-pigeon, one of the many she fed at that casement, and the swiftest and surest of several she sent with messages for the soldiers between the various stations and corps.  She had forgotten she had left the bird at the encampment.

She caressed it absently, while the tired creature sank down on her bosom; then only she saw that there was a letter beneath one wing.  She unloosed it, and looked at it without being able to tell its meaning; she could not read a word, printed or written.  Military habits were too strong with her for the arrival not to change her reverie into action; whoever it was for, it must be seen.  She gave the pigeon water and grain, then wound her way down the dark, narrow stairs, through the height of the tower, out into the passage below.

She found an old French cobbler sitting at a stall in a casement, stitching leather; he was her customary reader and scribe in this quarter.  She touched him with the paper.  “Bon Mathieu!  Wilt thou read this to me?”

“It is for thee, Little One, and signed ‘Petit Pot-de-terre.’”

Cigarette nodded listlessly.

“’Tis a good lad, and a scholar,” she answered absently.  “Read on!”

And he read aloud: 

“’There is ill news.  I send the bird on a chance to find thee.  Bel-a-faire-peau struck the Black Hawk—­a slight blow, but with threat to kill following it.  He has been tried, and is to be shot.  There is no appeal.  The case is clear; the Colonel could have cut him down, were that all.  I thought you should know.  We are all sorry.  It was done on the night of the great fete.  I am thy humble lover and slave.’”

So the boy-Zouave’s scrawl, crushed, and blotted, and written with great difficulty, ran in its brief phrases that the slow muttering of the old shoemaker drew out in tedious length.