"We have a right to praise the blackguards; without them our conscripts would be very poor trash.

The conscript fights because he has to fight; the blackguard fights because he loves to fight.

A great difference that." The Colonel of Tirailleurs lifted his eyes; a slight, pale effeminate, dark-eyed Parisian, who looked scarcely stronger than a hot-house flower, yet who, as many an African chronicle could tell, was swift as fire, keen as steel, unerring as a leopard's leap, untiring as an Indian on trail, once in the field with his Indigenes.
"In proportion as one loves powder, one has been a scoundrel, mon General," he murmured; "what the catalogue of your crimes must be!" The tough old campaigner laughed grimly; he took it as a high compliment.
"Sapristi! The cardinal virtues don't send anybody, I guess, into African service.

And yet, pardieu, I don't know.

What fellows I have known! I have had men among my Zephyrs--and they were the wildest insubordinates too--that would have ruled the world! I have had more wit, more address, more genius, more devotion, in some headlong scamp of a loustic than all the courts and cabinets would furnish.