Waterbury Democrat., 1901-05-09

WATERBURY EVEN and there of devil may care nobility and of wild grace that nothing could kill, Cigarette was the pet of tho army Of Africa and was as lawless as most of her patrons.
 She would eat succulent duck, thinking it all the spicier because 1t had been q soldiers loot: she would wear the gold plunder off n dead Arabs dress and never have a pang of con science with it. she would dSnce all night long. when she had q chance, like q little Bacchante; she would shoot man, if need be, with all the noncha l lance in the world. She had had | thousand lovers, from handsome mar l pulses of the guides to tawny, black l browed seoundrels iii the zouayes, and she had never loved anything except l the roll of the drum and the sight of her own arch, defiant face, with it's scarlet lips and it's short, jetty hair, when she saw it by chance in some furnished cuirass that served her for mirror.
 Away she went, now singing down l the crooked windings and over the ruined gardens of the old Moorish quar- ter of the Cashbah, the hilts of the tiny | pistols glancing in the sun and the fierce fire of the burning sunlight pour l ing down unheeded on the brave, bright l hawk eyes that had never since they | first opened to the world dropped or dimlned for tue rays of the sun or the gaze of lover, for the menace of death or the presence of war.
 1 Of course she was a little amazon: of course she was little guerrilla; of course she did not know whnt blush meant; of course her thoughts were as riotous as her mutinous mischief was in its act; but she was "a good sol dier," as she was given to say, with a- toss of her curly head. and she had some of the virtues of soldiers. Sol dlers had been about her ever since she first remembered having q wooden casserole for a cradle and sucking down red wine through pipestem. | Soldiers had been her books. her teach CTS, her models, her guardians and, later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She had no guiding star eX- 1 cept the eagles on the standards; she had no cradle song except the rata 1 plnn and the reveille; she had no sense of duty taught her except to face fire boldly, never to betray comrade and to worship two deities, Glory" and France"
 l Net there were tales told in the bar rack yards and under canvas of the | little Friend of the Flag th.t had gentler side; of how softly she would touch the wounded; of how deftly she would cure them; of how carelessly she would dash through under raking fro to take q draft of water to q l dying man; of how she had sat by an old grenadier's death couch to sing to hini, refusing to stir although it was feta at Chalons and she loves fetes as only French girl can; of how she had sent every sou of her money to her mother, 70 long as that mother lived, brutal, drunken, vile tongued old woman who had beaten her often times as the sole maternal attention. when she was but an infant. Her own sex would have seen no good in her. but her comrades at arms could and did. Of surety, she missed vir- tues that women prize; but not less O. surety had she caught some that they miss.
 Singing her refrain, on she dashed now, and, like chamois, she leaped down over the great masses of Turkish ruins, cleared the channel of q dry water course and allghted just in front of q Chasseur d'Afrique who was sit tlng alone OH a broken fragment of | white marble, relic of some Moorish mosque. He was bronzed, but scarcely looked so after the red. brown and black of the zouaves and the turco, for his skin was naturally very fair, the features delicate, the eyes very soff-for which NJ. Tata had growled contemptuously "a woman's facev-a long, silSen chestnut beard swept over his chest. and his figure, as he leaned tl,cre in the blue and scarlet and gold of the chasseurs' uniform. was, as Ciga-
 ette's critical eye told her, the figure of u superb cavalry rider, light, supple, long of limb, wide of chest, with every sinew and nerve firm knit as links of steel. She glanced at his hands, which were very white. despite the sun of Algiers and the labors that fall to private of chasseurs.
 "A handsome dandy." she thought, "and noble. whatever he is."
 But the best of blood was not new to her in the ranks of the Algerian regiments. She had known so many of them-those glded butterflies, those lordly spendthrifts who had served ln, the squadrons of the French horse, to be thrust nameless and unhonored into a sand hole hastily dug with bayonets in the hot hush of m African night.
 She woke him unceremoniously from his reverie with challenge to wine.
 "Ah. ha. my soldier, Tata Leroux says
 !