16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
Catalan on his mother's side and bitterly opposed
to Spanish – that is to say Castilian –
oppression of his country.
He was indeed opposed to oppression in all
its forms, and in his youth he had supported
the United Irishmen (his father was a Catholic
Irish officer in the Spanish service) in everything
but the violence of 1798: but above all,
far above all, he abhorred that of Buonaparte,
and he was perfectly willing to offer his services
to the British government to help put an
end to it, to offer them gratis pro Deo, thus
doing away with any hint of the odious name
of spy, a vile wretch hired by the Ministry to inform
upon his friends, a name associated in
his Irish childhood with that of Judas, Spy-
Wednesday coming just before the Passion.
His present undertaking, resumed after a
long interruption caused by the traitorous
passing of information from London to Ma-