In this maze of dark alleys the men of the Legion were at home, in the treacherous wineshops which depended on the custom of the soldiers. "Bar de la Légion," or "Bar du Légionnaire," or "Bar de Madagascar" these hovels called themselves. Good wine is ridiculously cheap in Algeria. But out of the légionnaires extra money must needs be made. They were given a brew in the wineshops made from grapes which had been pressed already two or three times and to which a little alcohol lent flavour and "aroma." Beside the wineshops were Mohammedan restaurants in which one could eat "kuskus" and "galettes," tough pancakes with honey; restaurants in which knives and forks were looked upon as accursed instruments, which doubtless the devil of the Rumis must have invented for devilish purposes unintelligible to a true believer. Poverty and filth reigned in these places, but they were good enough for the poor despised légionnaire. One café in this quarter had an individuality of its own, depending exclusively on the custom of the Legion. In a corner by the theatre a pretty little Spanish girl had put up a wooden hut and filled it with rickety old chairs, to be treated and used with great care, given her in charity probably somewhere or other merely to get rid of them. There she sold coffee to the soldiers of the Legion. This little woman had a good eye for business. Her coffee was, 'tis true, merely coloured hot water and not especially good water at that, but the soldier of the Legion willingly drank it, for Manuelita's coffee was very cheap indeed, and a pretty smile and a coquette glance went with each cup. When business was slack the hostess would even chat a little. These tactics secured for the sly little Spaniard the faithful custom of the légionnaires. La Légion made love to Manuelita unceasingly.... The old légionnaires stole flowers for her, and if somewhere in Tonquin or on the Morocco border plundering had been going on, Manuelita would some months later be sure to receive the finest presents, stolen for her by her old friends of the Legion and carried about all the time in knapsacks. The Legion was grateful to Manuelita. She was the great exception. Besides her and Madame la Cantinière there was no woman in the town of the Foreign Legion who would even in her wildest dreams have deigned a légionnaire worthy of a glance. Smith would never have patronised this Café de la Légion. He knew something much better. To him I owed my acquaintance with Ben Mansur's coffee. His was a Moorish coffee-house. Finely coloured mosaics formed Arabian proverbs on the floor and against the walls there were long marble benches. Arabs crouched on these benches and smoked comfortably gurgling narghiles--the incarnation of quietude and silence. For hours they sat over a single cup of coffee, whose purchase gave them also, according to Arabian custom, the right of spending the night on the marble benches. In stolid silence they played "esch schronsch"--chess.