Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida / Selected from the Works of Ouida

by Ouida

It had been a sanguinary, fruitless, cruel campaign; it had availed nothing except to drive the Arabs away from some hundred leagues of useless and profitless soil; hundreds of French soldiers had fallen by disease, and drought, and dysentery, as well as by shot and sabre, and were unrecorded save on the books of the bureaus, unlamented save, perhaps, in some little nestling hamlet among the great green woods of Normandy, or some wooden hut among the olives and the vines of Provence, where some woman toiling till sunset among the fields, or praying before some wayside saint's stone niche, would give a thought to the far-off and devouring desert that had drawn down beneath its sands the head that had used to lie upon her bosom, cradled as a child's, or caressed as a lover.

But the drums rolled out their long deep thunder over the wastes; and the shot-torn standards fluttered gaily in the breeze blowing from the west, and the clear full music of the French bands echoed away to the dim distant terrible south, where the desert-scorch and the desert-thirst had murdered their bravest and best—and the Army was en fête. En fête, for it did honour to its darling. Cigarette received the Cross.

Mounted on her own little bright bay, Etoile-Filante, with tricolour ribbons flying from his bridle and among the glossy fringes of his mane, the Little One rode among her Spahis. A scarlet képi was set on her thick silken curls, a tricolour sash was knotted round her waist, her wine-barrel was slung on her left hip, her pistols thrust in her ceinturon, and a light carbine held in her hand with the butt-end resting on her foot. With the sun on her child-like brunette face, her eyes flashing like brown diamonds in the light, and her marvellous horsemanship, showing its skill in a hundred désinvoltures and daring tricks, the little Friend of the Flag had come hither among her half-savage warriors, whose red robes surrounded her like a sea of blood.

And on a sea of blood she, the Child of War, had floated, never sinking in that awful flood, but buoyant ever above its darkest waves, catching ever some ray of sunlight upon her fair young head, and being oftentimes like a star of hope to those over whom its dreaded waters closed. Therefore they loved her, these grim, slaughterous, and lustful warriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood was sacred, by whom in their wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whose law was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, these brutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like the devouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of her curling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buried by the score in his body. They loved her, with the one fond triumphant love these vultures of the army ever knew; and to-day they gloried in her with fierce passionate delight. To-day she was to her wild wolves of Africa what Jeanne of Vaucouleurs was to her brethren of France. And to-day was the crown of her young life. It is given to most, if the desire of their soul ever become theirs, to possess it only when long and weary and fainting toil has brought them to its goal; when beholding the golden fruit so far off, through so dreary a pilgrimage, dulls its bloom as they approach; when having so long centred all their thoughts and hopes in the denied possession of that one fair thing, they find but little beauty in it when that possession is granted to satiate their love. But thrice happy, and few as happy, are they to whom the dream of their youth is fulfilled in their youth, to whom their ambition comes in full sweet fruitage, while yet the colours of glory have not faded to the young, eager, longing eyes that watch its advent. And of these was Cigarette.

In the fair, slight, girlish body of the child-soldier there lived a courage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's, a soul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired by poet's words or patriot's bidding, spontaneous as the rising and the blossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this child of the battle and the razzia, the spirit of genius, the desire to live and to die greatly. It was unreasoned on, it was felt, not thought, it was often drowned in the gaiety of young laughter, and the ribaldry of military jest, it was often obscured by noxious influence, and stifled beneath the fumes of lawless pleasure; but there, ever, in the soul and the heart of Cigarette, dwelt the germ of a pure ambition—the ambition to do some noble thing for France, and leave her name upon her soldiers' lips, a watchword and a rallying-cry for evermore. To be for ever a beloved tradition in the army of her country, to have her name remembered in the roll-call as "Mort sur le champ d'honneur;" to be once shrined in the love and honour of France, Cigarette—full of the boundless joys of life that knew no weakness and no pain, strong as the young goat, happy as the young lamb, careless as the young flower tossing on the summer breeze—Cigarette would have died contentedly. And now, living, some measure of this desire had been fulfilled to her, some breath of this imperishable glory had passed over her. France had heard the story of Zaraila; from the throne a message had been passed to her; what was far beyond all else to her, her own Army of Africa had crowned her, and thanked her, and adored her as with one voice, and wheresoever she passed the wild cheers rang through the roar of musketry, as through the silence of sunny air, and throughout the regiments every sword would have sprung from its scabbard in her defence if she had but lifted her hand and said one word—"Zaraila!"

The Army looked on her with delight now. In all that mute, still, immovable mass that stretched out so far, in such gorgeous array, there was not one man whose eyes did not turn on her, whose pride did not centre in her—their Little One who was so wholly theirs, and who had been under the shadow of their flag ever since the curls, so dark now, had been yellow as wheat in her infancy. The flag had been her shelter, her guardian, her plaything, her idol; the flutter of the striped folds had been the first thing at which her childish eyes had laughed; the preservation of its colours from the sacrilege of an enemy's touch had been her religion, a religion whose true following was, in her sight, salvation of the worst and the most worthless life; and that flag she had saved, and borne aloft in victory at Zaraila. There was not one in all those hosts whose eyes did not turn on her with gratitude, and reverence, and delight in her as their own.

But she had scarce time even for that flash of pain to quiver in impotent impatience through her. The trumpets sounded, the salvoes of artillery pealed out, the lances and the swords were carried up in salute; on to the ground rode the Marshal of France, who represented the imperial will and presence, surrounded by his staff, by generals of division and brigade, by officers of rank, and by some few civilian riders. An aide galloped up to her where she stood with the corps of her Spahis, and gave her his orders. The Little One nodded carelessly, and touched Etoile-Filante with the prick of the spur. Like lightning the animal bounded forth from the ranks, rearing and plunging, and swerving from side to side, while his rider, with exquisite grace and address, kept her seat like the little semi-Arab that she was, and with a thousand curves and bounds cantered down the line of the gathered troops, with the west wind blowing from the far-distant sea, and fanning her bright cheeks till they wore the soft scarlet flush of the glowing japonica flower. And all down the ranks a low, hoarse, strange, longing murmur went—the buzz of the voices which, but that discipline suppressed them, would have broken out in worshipping acclamations.

As carelessly as though she reined up before the café door of the As de Pique, she arrested her horse before the great Marshal who was the impersonation of authority, and put her hand up in the salute, with her saucy wayward laugh. He was the impersonation of that vast, silent, awful, irresponsible power which, under the name of the Second Empire, stretched its hand of iron across the sea, and forced the soldiers of France down into nameless graves, with the desert sand choking their mouths; but he was no more to Cigarette than any drummer-boy that might be present. She had all the contempt for the laws of rank of your thorough inborn democrat, all the gay insouciant indifference to station of the really free and untrammelled nature; and, in her sight, a dying soldier, lying quietly in a ditch to perish of shot-wounds without a word or a moan, was greater than all Messieurs les Maréchaux glittering in their stars and orders. As for impressing her, or hoping to impress her, with rank—pooh! You might as well have bid the sailing clouds pause in their floating passage because they came between royalty and the sun. All the sovereigns of Europe would have awed Cigarette not one whit more than a gathering of muleteers. "Allied sovereigns—bah!" she would have said, "what did that mean in '15? A chorus of magpies chattering over one stricken eagle!"

So she reined up before the Marshal and his staff, and the few great personages whom Algeria could bring around them, as indifferently as she had many a time reined up before a knot of grim Turcos, smoking under a barrack-gate. He was nothing to her; it was her Army that crowned her. "The Generalissimo is the poppy-head, the men are the wheat; lay every ear of the wheat low, and of what use is the towering poppy that blazed so grand in the sun?" Cigarette would say with metaphorical unction, forgetful, like most allegorists, that her fable was one-sided and unjust in figure and deduction.

Nevertheless, despite her gay contempt for rank, her heart beat fast under its golden-laced jacket as she reined up Etoile and saluted. In that hot clear sun all the eyes of that immense host were fastened on her, and the hour of her longing desire was come at last. France had recognised that she had done greatly, and France, through the voice of this, its chief, spoke to her—France, her beloved, and her guiding-star, for whose sake the young brave soul within her would have dared and have endured all things. There was a group before her, large and brilliant, but at them Cigarette never looked; what she saw were the sunburnt faces of her "children," of men who, in the majority, were old enough to be her grandsires, who had been with her through so many darksome hours, and whose black and rugged features lightened and grew tender whenever they looked upon their Little One. For the moment she felt giddy with sweet fiery joy; they were here to behold her thanked in the name of France.