He seemed to have forgotten Casmir, who had not been recaptured, and the dog, which was never heard of again, yet in the great battle that was fought that month near the Oasis of the Five Palms, an old légionnaire—the same who told me this story—fighting beside Jacques, was amazed, even in the heat of battle, at the fury of the latter.
"He was working off the dog," said the old fellow. "It is always so with the Legion, and that is what makes the Legion so terrible in battle—They are not so much fighting with the enemy, monsieur, they are bayoneting the Past, and what the Past has done to them."
QUITS
I
In Mustapha Street, which lies in the Moslem quarter of Sidi-bel-Abbès, there was some years ago a little hole of a restaurant run by a French girl. It is now a curio shop kept by Abdesslem, a gentleman with a beard of burnt-up black, long finger-nails, and a profound knowledge of the psychology of tourists, but the original use of the place still remains in evidence in the half scratched-out drawings and songs scribbled by légionnaires on the walls. There is also a vague scent of caporal tobacco which persists like a memory.
Mademoiselle Tricot was the name of the girl, she had come from who knows where, planted herself in the little shop and bloomed. She had wonderful hair, coils and coils of hair black as night and bright as polished ebony, eyes black as sloes and a face too practical to be pretty—hard, in fact, with that business hardness one finds so often amongst the women of the small shop-keeping class in France.
But she fascinated the légionnaires, sold them coffee and hideous non-alcoholic drinks made up with syrup of gum, and gave them credit occasionally for cigarettes.
Corporal Jacques of the 10th Company of the second regiment of the Foreign Legion was one of her warmest admirers. Jacques, towards the end of his fifth year's service, had fallen foul of the authorities over the matter of Choc, attempted escape, failed, and lost his discharge. He was now in his seventh year of service and had been promoted to the rank of corporal owing to his bravery and splendid fighting qualities. He had started in life as an Apache and he was still an Apache though of an improved order. A good-humoured scoundrel, brown now as a Brazil-nut and always in his spare time on the look out for profitable plunder. It was said that he had trained his famous dog to thieve for him. He did not want any assistant in that matter, however, if one were to believe the stories about him. But whether he got it by theft or whether he got it by honest means, one thing was certain: he generally had money to spend—and spent it. Spent it in the canteen of the Legion and at Mimi Tricot's "Restaurant"—but more especially of late at the latter place.
He was in love with the lady, yet he kept his passion so well concealed that no one guessed it, except Corporal Zeiss. Zeiss was a German from somewhere near Munich, a good-looking man and Jacques' best friend.