That he would keep it he was resolved.

The few impressive, vivid words of the young vivandiere had painted before him like a picture the horrors of mutiny and its hopelessness; rather than that, through him, these should befall the men who had become his brethren-in-arms, he felt ready to let the Black Hawk do his worst on his own life.

Yet a weariness, a bitterness, he had never known in the excitement of active service came on him, brought by this sting of insult brought from the fair hand of an aristocrate.
There was absolutely no hope possible in his future.

The uttermost that could ever come to him would be a grade something higher in the army that now enrolled him; the gift of the cross, or a post in the bureau.
Algerine warfare was not like the campaigns of the armies of Italy or the Rhine, and there was no Napoleon here to discern with unerring omniscience a leader's genius under the kepi of a common trooper.

Though he should show the qualities of a Massena or a Kleber, the chances were a million to one that he would never get even as much as a lieutenancy; and the raids on the decimated tribes, the obscure skirmishes of the interior, though terrible in slaughter and venturesome enough, were not the fields on which great military successes were won and great military honors acquired.