A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears; But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say. The Foreign Legion is popularly believed to be made up of broken men who, impelled by misfortune, misdeeds, unrequited love, or any of the other mishaps of life, have left their own countries—sometimes quite suddenly, between two days, and for their countries’ good—and who have enlisted in the Legion in order to find forgetfulness in action, or to place themselves beyond the reach of the law, or because they did not know what else to do with their lives. They come from all the European nations, from the Levant, and even representatives of the two Americas may be found within their ranks, and there are among them men of gentle birth, upbringing, and education; but I imagine that a very large proportion of them are simply penniless and friendless men who see in the Legion an opportunity of keeping body and soul together and a possibility, however slim, of rising to a commission by some desperate deed of derring-do. The _Légion Etrangère_ is the most rigidly disciplined, the hardest worked, and the most miserably paid body of soldiery in the world. Upon enlistment a recruit can give whatever name he chooses and no questions will be asked, for the Legion is not interested in the antecedents of its _bleus_ and makes no effort to ascertain their history or to penetrate such _noms-de-guerre_ as they may choose to assume. The term of enlistment is for five years, for service in Algeria or in any other of the French possessions, and the pay is a sou a day, which, when the franc stood at par, meant that a _légionnaire_ received the princely remuneration of eighteen dollars a year for his services to a grateful country. A _légionnaire_ can reënlist at the end of five years, and again at the end of ten, while those who have spent fifteen years with the colors are eligible for a pension, which varies according to rank, though there are not many who live to receive it. A foreigner, on completion of five years’ service, is entitled to naturalization as a French citizen.