LITMIR.BIZ

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      It was one of La Cigale's good days, and the poor "Grasshopper" was comparatively sane. He was one of the most remarkable men in the French Foreign Legion in that he was a perfect soldier, though a perfect lunatic for about thirty days in the month. When not a Grasshopper (or a Japanese lady, a Zulu, an Esquimaux dog or a Chinese mandarin) he was a cultured gentleman of rare perception, understanding, and sympathy. He had been an officer in the Belgian Corps of Guides, and military attaché at various courts....

      From a neighbouring group talking to Madame la Cantinière, in the canteen, came the words, clearly heard, "Ah! Oui! Oui! Dans la Rue des Tournelles." ...

      "Now, why should the words 'Rue des Tournelles' bring me a distinct vision of the Café Marsouins in Hanoï by the banks of the Red River in Tonkin?" asked the Grasshopper a minute later, in English.

      "Can't tell you, Cigale; there is no such rue in Hanoï," replied Jean Boule.

      "No, mon ancien," agreed the Grasshopper, "but there was Fifi Fifinette's place. Aha! I have it!"

      "Then give us a bit of it, Cocky," put in 'Erb (le Légionnaire 'Erbiggin—one, Herbert Higgins from Hoxton).

      "Yep—down by the factory, near Madame Ti-Ka's joint, it were," observed the Bucking Bronco.

      "Aha! I have it. I remember me why the words 'Rue des Tournelles' reminded me all suddenly of the Café Marsouins in Hanoï," continued the Grasshopper. "It was there that I heard from Old Dubeque the truth of the story of Ninon Dürlonnklau, who was Fifi Fifinette's predecessor. She was a reincarnation of Ninon de l'Enclos, and of course Ninon dwelt in the Rue des Tournelles in Old Paris a few odd centuries back."

      "Did they call the gal Neenong de Longclothes because she wore tights, Ciggy?" inquired 'Erb.

      "Put me wise to Neenong's little stunts before I hit it for the downy,"⁶ requested the Bucking Bronco.

      "Ninon de l'Enclos was a lady of the loveliest and frailest," said the Grasshopper. "Oh! but of a charm. Ravissante! She was, in her time, the well-beloved of Richelieu, Captain St. Etienne, the Marquis de Sevigné, Condé, Moissins, the Duc de Navailles, Fontenelle, Des Yveteaux, the Marquis de Villarceaux, St. Evrémonde, and the Abbé Chaulieu. On her eightieth birthday she had a devout and impassioned lover. On her eighty-fifth birthday the good Abbé wrote to her, 'Cupid has retreated into the little wrinkles round your undimmed eyes.'"...

      "Some girl," opined the Bucking Bronco.

      "And she lived in the Rue des Tournelles, and so the mention of that street called the Café Marsouins of Hanoï in Tonkin to my mind (for there did I hear the truth of the fate of Ninon Dürlonnklau, the predecessor of Fifi Fifinette whom some of us here knew)....

      "And the chevalier de Villars, the son of Ninon de l'Enclos, was her lover also, not knowing that Ninon was his mother, nor she that de Villars was her son—until too late. Outside her door a necromancer prophesied the death of de Villars to his face. An hour later Ninon knew by a birth-mark that de Villars was her son, and cried aloud, 'You are my son!' So he fulfilled the prophecy of the necromancer. He drove his dagger through his throat—just where this birth-mark was. What you call mole, eh? ... Shame and horror? No ... Love. They who loved Ninon de l'Enclos loved. Her arms or those of death. No other place for a lover of Ninon. You Anglo-Saxons could never understand....

      "And in Hanoï lived her reincarnation, Ninon Dürlonnklau, supposed to be the daughter of one Dürlonnklau, a German of the Legion, and of a perfect flower of a Lao woman. And, mind you, mes amis, there is nothing in the human form more lovely than a beautiful Lao girl from Upper Mekong.

      "And this Ninon! Beautiful? Ah, my friends—there are no words. Like yourselves, I seek not the bowers of lovers—but I have the great love of beauty, and I have seen Ninon Dürlonnklau. Would I might have seen Ninon de l'Enclos that I might judge if she were one half so lovely and so fascinating. And when I first beheld the Dürlonnklau she was no jeune fille....

      "She had been the well-beloved of governors, generals, and officials and officers—and there had been catastrophes, scandals, suicides ... the usual affaires—before she became the hostess of legionaries, marsouins,⁷ sailors....

      "She had herself not wholly escaped the tragedy and grief that followed in her train, for at the age of seventeen she had a son, and that son was kidnapped when at the age that a babe takes the strongest grip upon a mother's heart and love and life.... And after a madness of grief and a long illness, she plunged the more recklessly into the pursuit of that pleasure and joy that must ever evade the children of pleasure, les filles de joie."

      'Erb yawned cavernously.

      "Got a gasper, Farver?" he inquired of John Bull.

      The old soldier produced a small packet of vile black Algerian cigarettes from his képi, without speaking.

      "Quit it, Dub!" snapped the deeply interested Bucking Bronco. "Produce silence, and then some, or beat it."⁸

      "Awright, Bucko," mocked the unabashed 'Erb, imitating the American's nasal drawl and borrowing from his vocabulary. "You ain't got no call ter git het up none, thataway. Don't yew git locoed an rip-snort—'cos I guess I don' stand fer it, any."

      "Stop it, 'Erb," said John Bull, and 'Erb stopped it. There would be trouble between these two one hot day....

      "The Legion appropriated her to itself at last," continued the Grasshopper, "and picketed her house. Marsouins, sailors, pékins⁹—all ceased to visit her. It was more than their lives were worth, and there were pitched battles when whole escouades of ces autres tried to get in, before it was clearly understood that Ninon belonged to the Legion. And this was meat and drink to Ninon. She loved to be La Reine de la Légion Étrangère. This was not Algiers, mark you, and she had been born and bred in Hanoï. She had not that false perspective that leads the women of the West to prefer those of other Corps to the sons of La Légion. And there were one or two moneyed men hiding in our ranks just then. She loved one for a time and then another for a time, and frequently the previous one would act rashly. Some took their last exercise in the Red River. An unpleasant stream in which to drown.

      "Then came out, in a new draft, young Villa, supposed to be of Spanish extraction—but he knew no Spanish. I think he was the handsomest young devil I have ever seen. He had coarse black hair that is not of Europe, wild yellow eyes, and a curious, almost gold complexion. He was a strange boy, and of a temperament decidedly, and he loved flowers as some women do—especially ylang-ylang, jasmine, magnolia, and those of sweet and sickly perfume. He said they stirred his blood, and his pre-natal memories....

      "And one night old Dubeque took him to see La Belle Dürlonnklau.

      "As he told it to me I could see all that happened, for old Dubeque had the gift of speech, imagination, and the instinct of the drama.... Old Dubeque—the drunken, depraved scholar and gentilhomme.

      "Outside her door a begging soothsayer whined to tell their fortunes. It was the Annamite New Year, the Thêt, when the native must get money somehow for his sacred jollifications. This fellow stood making the humble laï or prolonged salaam, and at once awoke the interest of young Villa, who tossed him a piastre.

      "Old Dubeque swears that, as he grabbed it, this diseur de bonne aventure, a scoundrel of the Delta, said, 'Missieu French he die to-night,' or words to that effect in pigeon-French, and Villa rewarded the Job-like Annamite with a kick.... They went in....

      "As they entered the big room where were the Mekong girls and Madame Dürlonnklau, the boy suddenly stopped, started, stared, and stood with open mouth gazing at La Belle Ninon. He had eyes for no one else. She rose from her couch and came towards him, her face lit up and exalted. She led him to her couch and they talked. Love at first sight! Love had come to that so-experienced woman; to that wild farouche boy. Later they

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