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

CHAPTER SEVENIT WAS part of what Decoud would have called his sanematerialism that he did not believe in the possibility offriendship between man and woman.The one exception he allowed confirmed, he maintained,that absolute rule. Friendship was possible between brotherand sister, meaning by friendship the frank unreserve, asbefore another human being, of thoughts and sensations;all the objectless and necessary sincerity of one’s innermostlife trying to re-act upon the profound sympathies of anotherexistence.His favourite sister, the handsome, slightly arbitrary andresolute angel, ruling the father and mother Decoud in thefirst-floor apartments of a very fine Parisian house, was therecipient of Martin Decoud’s confidences as to his thoughts,actions, purposes, doubts, and even failures….‘Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of anotherSouth American Republic. One more or less, what does itmatter? They may come into the world like evil flowers ona hotbed of rotten institutions; but the seed of this one hasgerminated in your brother’s brain, and that will be enoughfor your devoted assent. I am writing this to you by the lightof a single candle, in a sort of inn, near the harbour, kept byan Italian called Viola, a protege of Mrs. Gould. The wholebuilding, which, for all I know, may have been contrived by