He spent the money in diverse ways, but he bought no cigarettes. Jahāl supplied him with cigarettes gratis during the next three months. He had said nothing about Jahāl's part in the business of hiding Mansoor, and he managed to impress Jahāl with the importance of his silence and its commercial value. That was Jacques all over. THE BIRD CAGE I Jacques was a bird fancier. The slums of London and Paris seem to breed bird fanciers, men who supply the trade, and just amateurs, market porters, artisans and so forth, who go bird-catching outside the city limits of a Sunday, or who content themselves with buying the feathered article in the rough state and training it for profit. Jacques in his Paris days used to do this occasionally by way of an honest occupation, and now, in Algeria, a corporal in the second regiment of the Foreign Legion, he managed to turn an honest penny sometimes at the bird-fancying business. A Spanish Jew with an unpronounceable name was his partner, Arab boys did the trapping, and Jacques found many a customer for the little red, soft-throated African birds amongst the officers of the Legion and their friends. It was in this way I met him first. One Sunday I came across him on the ramparts of Sidi-bel-Abbès. He had come there to meet someone in connection with the bird business, and as the someone had not yet turned up, we sat and talked. He told me this story, or, at least, he gave me the substance of the story I am going to tell you. The Legion recruits its units mostly from the failures and broken-down men of the world; consequently, and leaving aside young criminals who are driven into it by the law, it numbers few very young men in its ranks. Raboustel formed an exception to this rule. He was quite young, not more than eighteen or so, a fine fellow in every way, but unfit for the life he had chosen. He was a rebel, at least against discipline and restraint. He had joined the Legion expecting, no doubt, an adventurous life hunting down Arabs or fighting pitched battles with the tribes; he did not enjoy the reality, eternal drill, with road-making, route-marching, and odd jobs as the only alternatives. However, he possessed considerable force of character and power of restraint over himself, and after the first month or so settled down--or seemed to. He had no special chum, but he was popular in his way and friendly with Jacques. He told the latter his history--how he had been brought up to do as he liked by a mother who doted on him, how his mother had died, and his father, a vine-grower near Avignon, had tried to make him work; how he had rebelled, not against work, but against the monotony of regular labour, how a man in the cavalry had told him of the glorious times to be had in the Legion, and how he had enlisted.