Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command on board the
transport. The events of the last forty-eight hours in Sulaco were not
known to him; neither was he aware that the telegraphist in Esmeralda
had managed to warn his colleague in Sulaco. Like a good many officers
of the troops garrisoning the province, Sotillo had been influenced
in his adoption of the Ribierist cause by the belief that it had the
enormous wealth of the Gould Concession on its side. He had been one
of the frequenters of the Casa Gould, where he had aired his Blanco
convictions and his ardour for reform before Don Jose Avellanos, casting
frank, honest glances towards Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He was
known to belong to a good family persecuted and impoverished during the
tyranny of Guzman Bento. The opinions he expressed appeared eminently
natural and proper in a man of his parentage and antecedents. And he
was not a deceiver; it was perfectly natural for him to express elevated
sentiments while his whole faculties were taken up with what seemed then
a solid and practical notion--the notion that the husband of Antonia
Avellanos would be, naturally, the intimate friend of the Gould
Concession. He even pointed this out to Anzani once, when negotiating
the sixth or seventh small loan in the gloomy, damp apartment with
enormous iron bars, behind the principal shop in the whole row under the
Arcades. He hinted to the universal shopkeeper at the excellent terms
he was on with the emancipated senorita, who was like a sister to the
Englishwoman. He would advance one leg and put his arms akimbo, posing
for Anzani's inspection, and fixing him with a haughty stare.

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