whether her parents were living or dead. Marie
Emparoz, alas! resembles the baseless fabric of
a vision.

Jean Gigon rose to the rank of brigadier, and
manifested a decided partiality for the bottle.
Five more duels followed, because the other
brigadiers would persist in calling him Gigonnette.
The brigadiers were punished, and Jean
was degraded to the ranks for his excessive
sensibility. Nevertheless, strict orders were given
that the offensive name should not be repeated;
but a short speech which Jean Gigon made, one
day when he was not in liquor, had more effect
than all the injunctions of the commanding
officers.

"Now that I am reduced to the ranks," he
said to his messmates, "I give you notice that
whoever calls me Gigonnette is a coward, and
that instead of slicing off his ears, I will kill him.
I have no stripes on my sleeve to lose now, so
you may reckon on my being as good as my
word."

The rank was recovered, and lost, and
recovered again. The attractions of drink did not
wax feebler. More duels were fought, for various
degrees of provocation. It was a heavy offence
if any one pronounced his name so as to make
it sound like Gigot, or Leg-of-Mutton. He thus
got as far as twenty-seven single combats. At
the twenty-eighth, he executed what is called the
"coup de banderolle," which consists in slashing
your adversary diagonally, from the right shoulder
to the left hip. And so on; till the scene is
shifted to Africa.

A certain amount of good service is performed;
but there is no cessation of occasional
encounters up to the thirty-first, which was
unavoidable with a crazy Corsican. At the
beginning of the rainy season of 1840, our duellist
(still no higher than brigadier) met with the
final catastrophe destined by fate. He was on
stable-duty for the week; and after the horses
had received their evening attendance, he went,
with several of his comrades, to a public-house
kept by an ex-cantinière of the army, at the
sign of The Stuffed Jackal. A corporal of the
Foreign Legion happened to be standing before
the counter, on which he had just set down a
glass, half-filled with water and syrup of gum.
For the first and the last time in his life, Jean
Gigon picked a quarrel.

"Tiens!" he said, as he entered the public
room, and saw the corporal standing by himself,
"do you drink all alone by yourselves in your
regiment?"

"My dear colleague," replied the corporal,
"nothing will give me greater pleasure than to
touch glasses with you. But when I entered
for a little refreshment (for I have just left the
Dey's Hospital) there was not a single comrade
here, and I asked, as you see, for a glass of
syrup. I shall not get very jolly with that."

It was impossible to make a more proper
reply: but Jean Gigon's lot was to be fulfilled.
"No matter," he said; "a French soldier
ought not to drink alone. He should invite the
first person who comes." And before the corporal
could guess his intention, he snatched the
glass standing on the counter, and dashed its
contents on the floor. This mad action had
scarcely been committed before the corporal
gave Jean Gigon a sound slap in the face. His
companions rushed between the two adversaries,
and had no difficulty in making Jean Gigon
understand—for he was a good-hearted fellow at
bottom—how blamable his conduct was under
the circumstances. He acknowledged that he
was in the wrong. The corporal bravely offered
to give a reparation with arms, if it were
required; but the other brigadiers who were
present at this deplorable scene refused to allow it,
since he had been insulted the first, without any
reason. They shook hands, and the corporal took
his departure in the direction of Mustapha.

By ill luck, the dispute came to the knowledge
of the quartermaster of the squadron,
who had lately arrived from France, by exchange;
that is, he was unacquainted with the manners
of the army of Africa, where duels were
extremely rare; for, in the face of such an enemy,
men looked twice before they fought with a
comrade who, the very next day, might have an
opportunity of saving their life. But when the
quartermaster heard that a brigadier of his
squadron had received a blow from a corporal of
the Foreign Legion, he sent for Jean Gigon, and,
refusing to hear the witnesses of the altercation,
he violently reproached the old soldier, even
going so far as to call him a coward if he did not
find up the corporal, and fight him.

No one who knew Jean Gigon would have
subjected him to such an insult; and the
quartermaster, who subsequently died in Africa,
confessed that, amongst the mistakes he had
committed during his life, the one which he
regretted the most was his harsh injustice towards
Jean Gigon, the bravest of the brave.

At the word "coward," without replying a
syllable, Jean Gigon turned his back on the
quartermaster, and set off at the top of his
speed along the road to Mustapha. On
approaching Fort Bab-Azoum, he came up with
the corporal of the Foreign Legion, who was
proceeding leisurely to his cantonment, and
whom he accosted with the most perfect coolness.
"I beg your pardon, comrade, but I think
it was you who struck me a little while ago?"

"You forced me to do so."

"Oh! I don't bear you any grudge; but I
have just been treated as a coward for letting
you off without coming to the scratch; and you
appear to be too brave a fellow to refuse me the
opportunity of proving that I am not exactly
what I have been called."

"I thought that the affair had been settled;
but as I offered you a reparation, of course I am
ready to give it you."

Jean Gigon familiarly took his fellow-soldier's
arm, and they thus walked together to the
quarters of the Bab-Azoum gate. The corporal
had no weapon about him; so he consented
to fight with the terrible sabre of the Chasseurs
d'Afrique. Two brigadiers of the squadron
served as his witnesses; and the platform of a