Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad


A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured for His
Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered absolutely necessary
by the labours and the pomps of his entry into Sulaco, had been getting
hold of the administrative machine by making appointments, giving
orders, and signing proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould in the
audience room, His Excellency managed with his well-known skill to
conceal his annoyance and consternation. He had begun at first to talk
loftily of confiscation, but the want of all proper feeling and mobility
in the Senor Administrador's features ended by affecting adversely
his power of masterful expression. Charles Gould had repeated: "The
Government can certainly bring about the destruction of the San Tome
mine if it likes; but without me it can do nothing else." It was an
alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to hurt the sensibilities of
a politician whose mind is bent upon the spoils of victory. And Charles
Gould said also that the destruction of the San Tome mine would cause
the ruin of other undertakings, the withdrawal of European capital, the
withholding, most probably, of the last instalment of the foreign loan.
That stony fiend of a man said all these things (which were accessible
to His Excellency's intelligence) in a coldblooded manner which made one
shudder.

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