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 day to be slain by the
slash of an Arab flissa, and rewarded for ten years' splendid service by
the distinctive badge of a corporal.
Yet it might be doubted if any life would have done for him what this
had done; it might be questioned if, judging a career not by its social
position, but by its effect on character, any other would have been
so well for him, or would equally have given steel and strength to the
indolence and languor of his nature as this did. In his old world he
would have lounged listlessly through fashionable seasons, and in an
atmosphere that encouraged his profound negligence of everything;
and his natural listlessness would have glided from refinement to
effeminacy, and from lazy grace to blase inertia.
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