Under Two Flags

  At the same moment, through the lighted streets of Algiers, Cigarette,like a union of fairy and of fury, was flying with the news. Cigarettehad seen the flame of war at its height, and had danced in the midst ofits whitest heat, as young children dance to see the fires leap red inthe black winter's night. Cigarette loved the battle, the charge, thewild music of bugles, the thunder-tramp of battalions, the sirocco-sweepof light squadrons, the mad tarantala of triumph when the slaughterwas done, the grand swoop of the Eagles down unto the carnage, the wildhurrah of France.

  She loved them with all her heart and soul; and she flew now through thestarlit, sultry night, crying, "La guerre! La guerre! La guerre!"and chanting to the enraptured soldiery a "Marseillaise" of her ownimprovisation, all slang, and doggerel, and barrack grammar; butfire-giving as a torch, and rousing as a bugle in the way she sang it,waving the tricolor high over her head.