Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

in Tonoro. They had come to offer him a free pardon andthe rank of colonel from General Montero in considerationof joining the rebel army with his mounted band. No noticewas taken at the time of the proposal. It was joined, asan evidence of good faith, to a petition praying the SulacoAssembly for permission to enlist, with all his followers, inthe forces being then raised in Sulaco for the defence of theFive-Year Mandate of regeneration. The petition, like everythingelse, had found its way into Don Jose’s hands. He hadshowed to Mrs. Gould these pages of dirty-greyish roughpaper (perhaps looted in some village store), covered withthe crabbed, illiterate handwriting of the old padre, carriedoff from his hut by the side of a mud-walled church to bethe secretary of the dreaded Salteador. They had both bentin the lamplight of the Gould drawing-room over the documentcontaining the fierce and yet humble appeal of theman against the blind and stupid barbarity turning an honestranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest statedthat, but for being deprived of his liberty for ten days, hehad been treated with humanity and the respect due to hissacred calling. He had been, it appears, confessing and absolvingthe chief and most of the band, and he guaranteedthe sincerity of their good disposition. He had distributedheavy penances, no doubt in the way of litanies and fasts;but he argued shrewdly that it would be difficult for themto make their peace with God durably till they had madepeace with men.Never before, perhaps, had Hernandez’s head been in lessjeopardy than when he petitioned humbly for permission to