On his way to the gourbi, his mental occupation was a very
laborious effort to put together what he was pleased to call
a rondo, upon a model of versification all but obsolete.
This rondo, it is unnecessary to conceal, was to be an ode
addressed to a young widow by whom he had been captivated, and whom
he was anxious to marry, and the tenor of his muse was intended
to prove that when once a man has found an object in all respects
worthy of his affections, he should love her "in all simplicity."
Whether the aphorism were universally true was not very material
to the gallant captain, whose sole ambition at present was to construct
a roundelay of which this should be the prevailing sentiment.
He indulged the fancy that he might succeed in producing
a composition which would have a fine effect here in Algeria,
where poetry in that form was all but unknown.

"I know well enough," he said repeatedly to himself, "what I want to say.
I want to tell her that I love her sincerely, and wish to
marry her; but, confound it! the words won't rhyme. Plague on it!
Does nothing rhyme with 'simplicity'? Ah! I have it now:
'Lovers should, whoe'er they be,
Love in all simplicity.'
But what next? how am I to go on? I say, Ben Zoof," he called
aloud to his orderly, who was trotting silently close in his rear,
"did you ever compose any poetry?"

"No, captain," answered the man promptly: "I have never made
any verses, but I have seen them made fast enough at a booth
during the fete of Montmartre."

"Can you remember them?"