“So best after all, perhaps,” he said half aloud, in the solitude of the ruined and abandoned mosque. “He cannot well come to shipwreck with such a fair wind and such a smooth sea. And I--I am just as well here. To ride with the Chasseurs is more exciting than to ride with the Pytchley; and the rules of the Chambree are scarce more tedious than the rules of a Court. Nature turned me out for a soldier, though Fashion spoiled me for one. I can make a good campaigner--I should never make anything else.” And he let his sword drop back again into the scabbard, and quarreled no more with fate. His hand touched the thirty gold pieces in his sash. He started, as the recollection of the forgotten insult came back on him. He stood a while in thought; then he took his resolve. A half hour of quick movement, for he had become used to the heat as an Arab and heeded it as little, brought him before the entrance-gates of the Villa Aioussa. A native of Soudan, in a rich dress, who had the office of porter, asked him politely his errand. Every indigene learns by hard experience to be courteous to a French soldier. Cecil simply asked, in answer, if Mme. La Princesse were visible. The negro returned cautiously that she was at home, but doubted her being accessible. “You come from M. le Marquis?” he inquired. “No; on my own errand.” “You!” Not all the native African awe of a Roumi could restrain the contemptuous amaze in the word. “I. Ask if Corporal Victor, of the Chasseurs, can be permitted a moment's interview with your mistress. I come by permission,” he added, as the native hesitated between his fear of a Roumi and his sense of the appalling unfittingness of a private soldier seeking audience of a Spanish princesse. The message was passed about between several of the household; at last a servant of higher authority appeared: “Madame permitted Corporal Victor to be taken to her presence. Would he follow?” He uncovered his head and entered, passing through several passages and chambers, richly hung and furnished; for the villa had been the “campagne” of an illustrious French personage, who had offered it to the Princesse Corona when, for some slight delicacy of health, the air of Algeria was advocated. A singular sensation came on him, half of familiarity, half of strangeness, as he advanced along them; for twelve years he had seen nothing but the bare walls of barrack rooms, the goat-skin of douars, and the canvas of his own camp-tent. To come once more, after so long an interval, amid the old things of luxury and grace that had been so long unseen wrought curiously on him. He could not fairly disentangle past and present. For the moment, as his feet fell once more on soft carpets, and his eyes glanced over gold and silver, malachite and bronze, white silk and violet damasks, he almost thought the Algerian years were a disordered dream of the night.