Sapristi! How easy it is to play the saint and Samaritan with two words to one's maitre d'hotel, and a rouleau of gold that one never misses! The rich they can buy all things, you see, even heaven, so cheap!" With which withering satire Cigarette left Pere Matou in the conviction that he must be already dead and among the angels if the people began to talk of champagne to him; and flitting down between the long rows of beds with the old disabled veterans who tended them, skimmed her way, like a bird as she was, into another great chamber, filled, like the first, with suffering in all stages and at all years, from the boy-conscript, tossing in African fever, to the white-haired campaigner of a hundred wounds.
Cigarette was as caustic as a Voltaire this morning.

Coming through the entrance of the hospital, she had casually heard that Mme.

la Princesse Corona d'Amague had made a gift of singular munificence and mercy to the invalid soldiers--a gift of wine, of fruit, of flowers, that would brighten their long, dreary hours for many weeks.

Who Mme.

la Princesse might be she knew nothing; but the title was enough; she was a silver pheasant--bah! And Cigarette hated the aristocrats--when they were of the sex feminine.