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. "Come in and have some breakfast, ma belle. Only pay the toll."
Where he sat between the window and the table he caught her in his arms and drew her pretty face down; Cigarette, with the laugh of a saucy child, whisked her cigar out of her mouth and blew a great cloud of smoke in his eyes. She had no particular fancy for him, though she had for his wines; shouts of mirth from the other men completed the Marquis' discomfiture, as she swayed away from him, and went over to the other side of the table, emptying some bottles unceremoniously into her wine-keg; iced, ruby, perfumy claret that she could not have bought anywhere for the barracks.
"Hola!" cried the Marquis, "thou art not generally so coy with thy kisses, petite."
"I don't like bad clarets after good! I've just been with your Corporal, 'Bel-a-faire-peur'; you are no beauty after him, M. le Colonel."
Chateauroy's face darkened; he was a colossal-limbed man, whose bone was iron, and whose muscles were like oak-fibers; he had a dark, keen head like an eagle's; the brow narrow, but very high, looking higher because the close-cut hair was worn off the temples; thin lips hidden by heavy curling mustaches, and a skin burned black by long African service. Still he was fairly handsome enough not to have muttered so heavy an oath as he did at the vivandiere's jest.
"Sacre bleu! I wish my corporal were shot! One can never hear the last of him."