“You are generous, my Little One.”
“No; I am just.”
Her brave eyes glowed in the sun, her voice rang as clear as a bell. She raised her head proudly and glanced down the line of her army. She was just—that was the one virtue in Cigarette's creed without which you were poltroon, or liar, or both.
She alone knew what neglect, what indifference, what unintentional, but none the less piercing, insults she had to avenge; she alone knew of that pain with which she had heard the name of his patrician rival murmured in delirious slumber after Zaraila; she alone knew of that negligent caress of farewell with which her lips had been touched as lightly as his hand caressed a horse's neck or a bird's wing. But these did not weigh with her one instant to make her withhold the words that she deemed deserved; these did not balance against him one instant the pique and the pain of her own heart, in opposition to the due of his courage and his fortitude.
Cigarette was rightly proud of her immunity from the weakness of her sex; she had neither meanness nor selfishness.
The Marshal listened gravely, the groups around him smilingly. If it had been any other than the Little One, it would have been very different; as it was, all France and all Algeria knew Cigarette.
“What may be the name of this man whom you praise so greatly, my pretty one?” he asked her.
“That I cannot tell, M. le Marshal. All I know is he calls himself here Louis Victor.”
“Ah! I have heard much of him. A fine soldier, but—”
“A fine soldier without a 'but,'” interrupted Cigarette, with rebellious indifference to the rank of the great man she corrected, “unless you add, 'but never done justice by his Chief.'”