and ameliorating
the condition of his comrades. The habit of application alone was
something gained; and if it kept them only for a while from the haunts
of those coarsest debaucheries which are the only possible form in which
the soldier can pursue the forbidden license of vice, it was better
than that leisure should be spent in that joyless bestiality which made
Cecil, once used to every refinement of luxury and indulgence, sicken
with a pitying wonder for those who found in it the only shape they knew
of "pleasure."

He had seen from the first, capabilities that might be turned to endless
uses; in the conscript drawn from the populace of the provinces there
was almost always a knowledge of self-help, and often of some trade,
coupled with habits of diligence; in the soldier made from the street
Arab of Paris there were always inconceivable intelligence, rapidity of
wit, and plastic vivacity; in the adventurers come, like himself, from
higher grades of society, and burying a broken career under the shelter
of the tricolor, there were continually gifts and acquirements, and even
genius, that had run to seed and brought forth no fruit. Of all these
France always avails herself in a great degree; but, as far as Cecil's
influence extended, they were developed much more than usual. As his own
character gradually changed under the force of fate, the desire for some
interest in life grew on him (every man, save one absolutely brainless
and self-engrossed, feels this sooner or late); and that interest he
found, or rather created, in his regiment. All that he could do to
contribute to its efficiency in the field he did; all that he could do
to further its internal excellence he did likewise.

Coarseness perceptibly abated, and violence became much rarer in that
portion of his corps with which he had immediately to do; the men
gradually acquired from him a better, a higher tone; they learned to do
duties inglorious and distasteful as well as they did those which led
them to the danger and the excitation that they loved; and, having their
good faith and sympathy, heart and soul, with him, he met, in these
lawless leopards of African France, with loyalty, courage, generosity,
and self-abnegation far surpassing those which he had ever met with in
the polished civilization of his early experience.

For their sakes, he spent many of his free hours in the Chambree. Many a
man, seeing him there, came and worked at some ingenious des