The coarsest ruffian felt ashamed to make an utter beast of himself before the calm eyes of the patrician.

The most lawless pratique felt a lie halt on his lips when the contemptuous glance of his gentleman-comrade taught him that falsehood was poltroonery.

Blasphemous tongues learned to rein in their filthiness when this "beau lion" sauntered away from the picket-fire, on an icy night, to be out of hearing of their witless obscenities.

More than once the weight of his arm and the slash of his saber had called them to account in fiery fashion for their brutality to women or their thefts from the country people, till they grew aware that "Bel-a-faire-peur" would risk having all their swords buried in him rather than stand by to see injustice done.
And throughout his corps men became unconsciously gentler, juster; with a finer sense of right and wrong, and less bestial modes of pleasure, of speech, and of habit, because he was among them.

Moreover, the keen-eyed desperadoes who made up the chief sum of his comrades saw that he gave unquestioning respect to a chief who made his life a hell; and rendered unquestioning submission under affronts, tyrannies, and insults which, as they also saw, stung him to the quick, and tortured him as no physical torture would have done--and the sight was not without a strong effect for good on them.