When I was neither on guard at the batteries nor on duty in the tent, I liked supping at the fair. There the stories of the camp were told again; but under the influence of liquor and good cheer they became much finer. One of our fellows, a brevet-captain, whose name I have forgotten in that of "Dinarzade" which we gave him, was famous for his yarns; it would have been more correct to say "Scheherazade," but we were not so careful as that. As soon as we saw him, we ran up to him, fought for him: we vied with each other as to who should have him on his score. Short of body, long of leg, with sunk cheeks, drooping mustachios, eyebrows forming a comma at the outer angle, a hollow voice, a huge sword in a coffee-coloured scabbard, the carriage of a soldier poet, something between the suicide and the jolly dog, that solemn wag Dinarzade never laughed, and it was impossible to look at him without laughing. He was the necessary second in all the duels and the lover of all the barmaids. He viewed all he said on the dark side, and interrupted his recitals only to take a pull at a bottle, relight his pipe, or swallow a sausage. One night, when it was drizzling, we were seated round the tap of a wine-cask tilted towards us in a cart with its shafts in the air. A candle stuck on the cask lighted us; a piece of packing-cloth, stretched from the end of the shafts to two posts, served us for a roof. Dinarzade, with his sword awry after the manner of Frederic II., stood between one of the wheels and a horse's crupper, telling a story to our great content. The canteen-women who brought us our rations stayed with us to listen to our Arab. The attentive group of bacchantes and Silenuses which formed the chorus accompanied the narrative with marks of its surprise, approval, or disapproval. "Gentlemen," said the story-teller, "you all knew the Green Knight, who lived in the days of King John[105]?" Every one said: "Yes, yes." Dinarzade swallowed down a rolled pancake, burning himself as he did so. "This Green Knight, gentlemen, as you know, since you have seen him, was very good-looking: when the wind blew back his ruddy locks over his casque, it looked like a twist of tow round a green turban." The audience: "Bravo!" [Sidenote: Dinarzade's tales.] "One evening in May, he sounded his horn at the draw-bridge of a castle in Picardy, or Auvergne, no matter which. In that castle lived "the Lady of Great Companies." She welcomed the knight, told her servants to disarm him and lead him to the bath, and came and sat with him at a splendid table; and the pages-in-waiting were mute." The audience: "Oh, oh!" "The lady, gentlemen, was tall, flat, lean, and shambling, like the major's wife; otherwise she had plenty of expression and an arch look. When she laughed and showed her long teeth beneath her stumpy nose, one did not know what one was about. She fell in love with the knight and the knight with her, although he was afraid of her."