“What’s the odds if they do, sir?” responded the other.  “It relieves one’s feelings a little.  All of ’em know I’m English, but never a one of ’em know what you are.  The name you was enrolled by won’t really tell ’em nothing.  They guess it ain’t yours.  That cute little chap, Tata, he says to me yesterday, ’you’re always a-treating of your galonne like as if he was a prince.’  ‘Damme!’ says I, ’I’d like to see the prince as would hold a candle to him.’  ‘You’re right there,’ says the little ’un.  ’There ain’t his equal for taking off a beggar’s head with a back sweep.’”

The Corporal laughed a little again, as he tossed himself down on the carpet.

“Well, it’s something to have one virtue!  But have a care what those chatter-boxes get out of you.”

“Lord, sir!  Ain’t I been a-taking care these ten years?  It comes quite natural now.  I couldn’t keep my tongue still; that wouldn’t be in anyways possible.  So I’ve let it run on oiled wheels on a thousand rum tracks and doublings.  I’ve told ’em such a lot of amazing stories about where we come from, that they’ve got half a million different styles to choose out of.  Some thinks as how you’re a Polish nob, what got into hot water with the Russians; some as how you’re a Italian prince, what was cleaned out like Parma and them was; some as how you’re a Austrian Archduke that have cut your country because you was in love with the Empress, and had a duel about her that scandalized the whole empire; some as how you’re a exiled Spanish grandee a-come to learn tactics and that like, that you may go back, and pitch O’Donnell into the middle of next week, whenever you see a chance to cut in and try conclusions with him.  Bless you, sir! you may let me alone for bamboozling of anybody.”

The Corporal laughed again, as he began to unharness himself.  There was in him a certain mingling of insouciance and melancholy, each of which alternately predominated; the former his by nature, the latter born of circumstances.

“If you can outwit our friends the Zephyrs you have reached a height of diplomacy indeed!  I would not engage to do it myself.  Take my word for it, ingenuity is always dangerous—­silence is always safe.”

“That may be, sir,” responded the Chasseur, in the sturdy English with which his bright blue eyes danced a fitting nationality.  “No doubt it’s uncommon good for them as can bring their minds to it—­just like water instead o’ wine—­but it’s very trying, like the teetotalism.  You might as well tell a Newfoundland not to love a splash as me not to love a chatter.  I’d cut my tongue out sooner than say never a word that you don’t wish—­but say something I must, or die for it.”

With which the speaker, known to Algerian fame by the sobriquet of “Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort,” from the hair-breadth escapes and reckless razzias from which he had come out without a scratch, dropped on his knees and began to take off the trappings of his fellow-soldier, with as reverential a service as though he were a lord of the bedchamber serving a Louis Quatorze.  The other motioned him gently away.