Waterbury Democrat., 1901-05-15

l; Cecil looked after her with certain 1 touch of pity for her in him.
 l What a gallant boy is spoiled in that l little amazon.' he thought. The quick 1 flush of her face, the quick withdrawal | of hef hand, he had not noticed. She l had not much interest for him-Gc2rce- 1 ly any, indeed-save that he saw she was pretty, with a mischievous face l that all the sun tan of Africa and all l the wild life of the Caserne could not harden or debase. But he was sorry | child so bright and 90 brave should be l turned into three parts trooper, as she
 was, should have been tossed up on the scum and filth of the lowest barrack life and should be doomed in a few 1 years time to become the yellow, bat 1 tered, foul mouthed, vulture eyed camp | follower that premature old age would
 surely render the darling of the tricol-
 or, the pythoness of the AS du Pique.
 'Hah!' said Cigarette between her little teeth.
 She stood in the glisering Algerine night, brilliant with million stars and
 balmy with million flowers, before the bronze trellised gate of the villa on
 the Sahel, where Chateauroy, when he
 was not on active service, indemnifed
 himself with the magnifcence that his
 private fortune enabled him to enjoy, for the unsparing exertiens and the rugged privations that he always shar- ed willingly with the lowest of his sol
 diers. Tonight the windows of the pretty, low, snow white, far stretching building were lighted aAd open, and through the wilderness CT cactus, myr- tie, orange, citron, fuchsia and thou sand flowers that almost buried it un- der their weight of leaf and blossom a
 myriad of lamps were gleaming like so
 many glowworms beneath the foliage, while from 9 cedar grove the melodies and overtures of the best military
 bands in Algiers came mellowed by the
 distance and the fall of the bubbling
 fountains. Cigarette looked and lis
 tened, and her gay, brown face grew
 duskily warm with wrath.
 "Ah, bah!' she muttered, as she
 pressed her pretty lips to the lattice
 work. "The men die like murrained
 sheep in the hospital, and get sour
 bread tossed to them as if they were
 pigs, and are thrashed if they pawn
 their mgskets for q stoup of drink
 when their throats are as dry as the
 desert-and you Give in clover. The
 colonel gives his fetes with stars and
 ribbons on his breast, while those who
 won the battle lie rotting in the sandp'
 Cigarette was 8 resolute little demo-
 crat; she had loaded the carbines be
 hind the barricade in an emeute in
 Paris before she was 10 years old, and
 was not seldom in the perplexity of conflicting creeds when her loyalty to the tricolor and the guidons smote with violent clash on her love for the populace and their liberty.
 She looked moment longer through the gilded scrollWork, then thrust her pistols well within her sash and, push ing herself through the prickly cactus hedge, launched herself with mimi table dexterity on to the other side of She cacti. She crossed the breadth of the grounds under the heavy shade of lrbutus trees with hare's feetness, and stood second looking at the open windows and the terraces that lay before them, brightly lighted by the summer moon and by the lamps that sparkled among the shrubs. Then down she dropped, as quickly, as lightly, as q young setter.
 ssAhv' she said, quickly and sharply, with deep drawn breath. The single ejaculation was at once a menace, a tenderness, whirlwind of rage, vol ume Of disdain, world of pity. 1t was intensely French, and the whole nature of Cigarette was in it.
 Yet all she saw was a small and bril- liant group sauntering to and fro be- fore the open windows after dinner, listening to the bands and laughing low and softly, and at some distance from them, beneath the shade of a cedar, the figure of q corporal of lchasseurs, calm, erect, motionless, as though he were the figure of a soldier cast in bronze.
 "A true soldier!" she muttered where she lay among the rhododendrons, while her eyes grew very soft as she gave the highest word of praise that her whole range of language held A true sol dier! How he keeps his promise! But 1t must be bitter.''
 She looked awhile very wistfully at the chasseur where he stood under the Lebanon boughs; then her glance swept bright as hawks over the terrace and lighted with a president hatred on the central form of all, a Woman's There were two other great ladies there, but she passed them and darted with un- erring instinct on that proud, fair, pa trician head with it's naughty, staglike carriage and the crown of it's golden hair.
 Cigarette had seen grandes danes by the thousand, but now for the first time the sight of one of those aristocrats smote her with a keen, hot sting of heartburning jealousy, with a sudden perception, quick as thought, bitter as gall, wounding and swift and poignant, of what this womanhood that he had said she herself had lost might be in it's highest and purest shape.
 "Unsexed-he said was unseXed," she unused, while her teeth clinched on the ruby fullness of her lips, and her heart swelled half with impotent rage, half with unconfessed pain. For the first time looking on this imperial for
 -sz H.