"Let him take care! If he offend me there are five hundred swords that will thrust civility into him, five hundred shots that will teach him the cost of daring to provoke Cigarette!" En route through the town her wayward way took the pretty brunette Friend of the Flag as many devious meandering as a bird takes in a summer's day flight, when it stops here for a berry, there for a grass seed, here to dip its beak into cherries, there to dart after a dragon-fly, here to shake its wings in a brook, there to poise on a lily-bell.
She loitered in a thousand places, for Cigarette knew everybody; she chatted with a group of Turcos, she emptied her barrel for some Zouaves, she ate sweetmeats with a lot of negro boys, she boxed a little drummer's ear for slurring over the "r'lin tintin" at his practice, she drank a demi-tasse with some officers at a cafe; she had ten minutes' pistol-shooting, where she beat hollow a young dandy of the Guides who had come to look at Algiers for a week, and made even points with one of the first shots of the "Cavalry a pied," as the Algerian antithesis runs.

Finally she paused before the open French window of a snow-white villa, half-buried in tamarisk and orange and pomegranate, with the deep-hued flowers glaring in the sun, and a hedge of wild cactus fencing it in; through the cactus she made her way as easily as a rabbit burrows; it would have been an impossibility to Cigarette to enter by any ordinary means; and balancing herself lightly on the sill for a second, stood looking in at the chamber.
"Ho, M.le Marquis! the Zouaves have drunk all my wine up; fill me my keg with yours for once--the very best burgundy, mind.

I'm half afraid your cellar will hurt my reputation." The chamber was very handsome, hung and furnished in the very best Paris fashion, and all glittering with amber and ormolu and velvets; in it half a dozen men--officers of the cavalry--were sitting over their noon breakfast, and playing at lansquenet at the same time.

The table was crowded with dishes of every sort, and wines of every vintage; and the fragrance of their bouquet, the clouds of smoke, and the heavy scent of the orange blossom without, mingled together in an intense perfume.

He whom she addressed, M.le Marquis de Chateauroy, laughed, and looked up.
"Ah, is it thee, my pretty brunette?
Take what thou wantest out of the ice pails." "The best growths ?" asked Cigarette, with the dubious air and caution of a connoisseur.
"Yes!" said M.le Marquis, amused with the precautions taken with his cellar, one of the finest in Algiers.