Any other, even a corporal, would have been challenged with a storm of raillery, a volley of congratulation, and would have had shouted or hissed after him opprobrious accusations of "faisant suisse" if he had not forthwith treated his comrades royally from such largesse.

With Bel-a-faire-peur they held their peace; they kept the silence which they saw that he wished to keep, as, his hour of liberty being come, he went slowly out of the great court with the handful of Napoleons thrust in the folds of his sash.
Rather unconsciously than by premeditation his steps turned through the streets that led to his old familiar haunt, the As de Pique; and dropping down on a bench under the awning, he asked for a draught of water.

It was brought him at once; the hostess, a quick, brown little woman from Paris, whom the lovers of Eugene Sue called Rogolette, adding of her own accord a lump of ice and a slice or two of lemon, for which she vivaciously refused payment, though generosity was by no means her cardinal virtue.
"Bel-a-faire-peur" awakened general interest through Algiers; he brought so fiery and so daring a reputation with him from the wars and raids of the interior, yet he was so calm, so grave, so gentle, so listless.

It was known that he had made himself the terror of Kabyle and Bedouin, yet here in the city he thanked the negro boy who took him a glass of lemonade at an estaminet, and sharply rebuked one of his men for knocking down an old colon with a burden of gourds and of melons; such a Roumi as this the good people of the Franco-African capital held as a perfect gift of the gods, and not understanding one whit, nevertheless fully appreciated.
He did not look at the newspapers she offered him; but sat gazing out from the tawny awning, like the sail of a Neapolitan felucca, down the checkered shadows and the many-colored masses of the little, crooked, rambling, semi-barbaric alley.

He was thinking of the Napoleons in his sash and of the promise he had pledged to Cigarette.