“Diable!  I did a neat thing yesterday.  Out on the hills, there, was a shepherd; he’d got two live geese swinging by their feet.  They were screeching—­screeching—­screeching!—­and they looked so nice and so plump that I could smell them, as if they were stewing in a casserole, till I began to get as hungry as a gamin.  A lunge would just have cut the question at once; but the orders have got so strict about petting the natives I thought I wouldn’t have any violence, if the thing would go nice and smoothly.  So I just walked behind him, and tripped him up before he knew where he was—­it was a picture!  He was down with his face in the sand before you could sing Tra-la-la!  Then I just sat upon him; but gently—­very gently; and what with the sand and the heat, and the surprise, and, in truth, perhaps, a little too, my own weight, he was half suffocated.  He had never seen me; he did not know what it was that was sitting on him; and I sent my voice out with a roar—­’I am a demon, and the fiend hath bidden me take him thy soul to-night!’ Ah! how he began to tremble, and to kick, and to quiver.  He thought it was the devil a-top of him; and he began to moan, as well as the sand would let him, that he was a poor man, and an innocent, and the geese were the only things he ever stole in all his life.  Then I went through a little pantomime with him, and I was very terrible in my threats, and he was choking and choking with the sand, though he never let go of the geese.  At last I relented a little, and told him I would spare him that once, if he gave up the stolen goods, and never lifted his head for an hour.  Sapristi!  How glad he was of the terms!  I dare say my weight was unpleasant; so the geese made us a divine stew that night, and the last thing I saw of my man was his lying flat as I left him, with his face still down in the sand-hole.”

Cigarette nodded and laughed.

“Pretty fair, Tata; but I have heard better.  Bah! a grand thing certainly, to fright a peasant, and scamper off with a goose!”

“Sacre bleu!” grumbled Tata, who was himself of opinion that his exploit had been worthy of the feats of Harlequin; “thy heart is all gone to the Englishman.”

Cigarette laughed saucily and heartily, tickled at the joke.  Sentiment has an exquisitely ludicrous side when one is a black-eyed wine-seller perched astride on a wall, and dispensing bandy-dashed wine to half a dozen sun-baked Spahis.

“My heart is a reveil matin, Tata; it wakes fresh every day.  An Englishman!  Why dost thou think him that?”

“Because he is a giant,” said Tata.

Cigarette snapped her fingers: 

“I have danced with grenadiers and cuirassiers quite as tall, and twice as heavy.  Apres?”

“Because he bathes—­splash!  Like any water-dog.”

“Because he is silent.”

“Because he rises in his stirrups.”

“Because he likes the sea.”

“Because he knows boxing.”