CHAPTER XVIII.
CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE.
"Oh! We are a queer lot; a very queer lot.

Sweepings of Europe," said Claude de Chanrellon, dashing some vermouth off his golden mustaches, where he lay full-length on three chairs outside the Cafe in the Place du Gouvernement, where the lamps were just lit, and shining through the burnished moonlight of an Algerian evening, and the many-colored, many-raced, picturesque, and polyglot population of the town were all fluttering out with the sunset, like so many gay-colored moths.
"Hein! Diamonds are found in the rag-picker's sweepings," growled a General of Division, who was the most terrible martinet in the whole of the French service, but who loved "my children of hell," as he was wont to term his men, with a great love, and who would never hear another disparage them, however he might order them blows of the stick, or exile them to Beylick himself.
"You are poetic, mon General," said Claude de Chanrellon; "but you are true.

We are a furnace in which Blackguardism is burned into Dare-devilry, and turned out as Heroism.

A fine manufacture that, and one at which France has no equal." "But our manufactures keep the original hall mark, and show that the devil made them if the drill have molded them!" urged a Colonel of Tirailleurs Indigenes.
Chanrellon laughed, knocking the ash off a huge cigar.
"Pardieu! We do our original maker credit then; nothing good in this world without a dash of diablerie.

Scruples are the wet blankets, proprieties are the blank walls, principles are the quickset hedge of life, but devilry is its champagne!" "Ventre bleu!" growled the General.