"Non vi pigliate fastidio," said Carmelita. "Don't trouble yourself Signor Azzurro--Monsieur Bleu. And if Signor Luigi Rivoli should enter and see the young Signor on my side of the bar--Luigi's side of the bar--why, one look of his eye would so make the young Signor's hair curl that, for the rest of his life, the calamistro, the curling-tongs, would be superfluous."
"Yep," chimed in the Bucking Bronco. "I guess as haow it's about time yure Loojey's bright eyes got closed, my dear, an' I'm goin' ter bung 'em both up one o' these fine days, when I got the cafard. Yure Loojey's a great lady-killer an' recruit-killer, we know, an' he can talk a tin ear on a donkey. I say Il parlerait une oreille d'etain sur un âne. Yure Loojey'd make a hen-rabbit git mad an' bark. I say Votre Loojey causer ait une lapine devenir fou et écorcer. I got it in fer yure Loojey. I say Je l'ai dans pour votre Loojey.... Comprenny? Intendete quel che dico?" and the Bucking Bronco drank off a pint of wine, drew his tiny, well-thumbed French dictionary from one pocket and his "Travellers' Italian Phrase-book" from another, cursed the Tower of Babel, and all foreign tongues, and sought words wherewith to say that it was high time for Luigi Rivoli "to quit beefin' aroun' Madam lar Canteenair, to wipe off his chin considerable, to cease being a sticker, a sucker, and a skinamalink girl-sponging meal-and-money cadger; and to quit tellin' stories made out o' whole cloth,[#] that cut no ice with nobody except Carmelita."
[#] Untrue.
This young lady gathered that, as usual, the poor, silly jealous Americano was belittling and insulting her Luigi, if not actually threatening him. Him, who could break any Americano across his knee. With a toss of her head and a contemptuous "Invidioso! Scioccone!" for the Bronco, a flick on the nose with the krenfell flower from her ear for Rupert, a blown kiss for Babbo Jean Boule, Carmelita flitted away, going from table to table to minister to the mental, moral, and physical needs of her other devoted Légionnaires as they arrived--men of strange and dreadful lives who loved her then and there, who remembered her thereafter and elsewhere, and who sent her letters, curios, pressed flowers and strange presents from the ends of the earth where flies the tricouleur, and the Flag of the Legion--in Tonkin, Madagascar, Senegal, Morocco, the Sahara--in every Southern Algerian station wherever the men of the Legion tramped to their death to the strains of the regimental march of "Tiens, voilà du boudin."
"Advise me, Mam'zelle," said a young Frenchman of the Midi, rising to his feet with a flourish of his képi and a sweeping bow, as Carmelita approached the table at which he and three companions sat, "Advise me as to the investment of this wealth, fifty centimes, all at once. Shall it be five glorious green absinthes or five chopes of the wine of Algiers?--or shall I warm my soul with burning bapédi...?"
"Four bottles of wine is what you want for André, Raoul, Léon, and yourself," was the reply. "Absinthe is the mamma and the papa and all the ancestors of le cafard and you are far too young and tender for bapédi. It mingles not well with mother's milk, that...."
In the extreme corner of the big, badly-lit room, a Legionary sat alone, his back to the company, his head upon his folded arms. Passing near, on her tour of ministration, Carmelita's quick eye and ear perceived that the man was sobbing and weeping bitterly. It might be the poor Grasshopper passing through one of his terrible dark hours, and Carmelita's kind heart melted with pity for the poor soul, smartest of soldiers, and maddest of madmen.
Going over to where he sat apart, Carmelita bent over him, placed her arm around his neck, and stroked his glossy dark hair.
"Pourquoi faites-vous Suisse, mon pauvre?" she murmured with a motherly caress. "What is it? Tell Carmelita." The man raised his face from his arms, smiled through his tears and kissed the hand that rested on his shoulder. The handsome and delicate face, the small, well-kept hands, the voice, were those of a man of culture and refinement.
"I ja nai ka!--How delightful!" he said. "You will make things right. I am to be made machi-bugiyo, governor of the city to-morrow, and I wish to remain a Japanese lady. I do not want to lay aside the suma-goto and samisen for the wakizashi and the katana--the lute for the dagger and sword. I don't want to sit on a tokonoma in a yashiki surrounded by karo...."