one of the most intrepid, victorious, and chivalrous lascars
of its fiery ranks. Fate had flung him off his couch of down into the
tempest of war; into the sternness of life spent ever on the border
of the grave; ruled over by an iron code, requiring at every
step self-negation, fortitude, submission, courage, patience; the
self-control which should take the uttermost provocation from those in
command without even a look of reprisal, and the courageous recklessness
which should meet death and deal death; which should be as the eagle to
swoop, as the lion to rend. And he was not found wanting in it.

He was too thoroughbred to attempt to claim a superiority that fortune
no longer conferred on him; to seek to obtain a deference that he had
no longer the position to demand. He was too quiet, too courteous, too
calmly listless; he had too easy a grace, too soft a voice, and too many
gentleman habits, for them. But when they found that he could fight like
a Zouave, ride like an Arab, and bear shot-wounds or desert-thirst
as though he were of bronze, it grew a delight to them to see of what
granite and steel this dainty patrician was made; and they loved him
with a rough, ardent, dog-like love, when they found that his last
crust, in a long march, would always be divided: that the most desperate
service of danger was always volunteered for by him; that no severity of
personal chastisement ever made him clear himself of a false charge at a
comrade's expense; and that all his pay went in giving a veteran a stoup
of wine, or a sick conscript a tempting meal, or a prisoner of Beylick
some food through the grating, scaled too at risk of life and limb.

He had never before been called on to exert either thought or action;
the necessity for both called many latent qualities in him into play.
The same nature, which had made him wish to be killed over the Grand
Military course, rather than live to lose the race, made him now bear
privation as calmly, and risk death as recklessly, as the heartiest and
most fiery loustic of the African regiments.

On the surface it seemed as though never was there a life more utterly
thrown away than the life of a Guardsman and a gentleman, a man of
good blood, high rank, and talented gifts--had he ever chosen to make
anything of them--buried in the ranks of the Franco-African army;
risking a nameless grave in the sand with almost every hour, associated
with the roughest riffraff of Europe, liable any