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

were doing. They are prudent gentlemen. In the Assemblythey called themselves Moderates, and opposed every energeticmeasure with philanthropic pensiveness. At the firstrumours of Montero’s victory, they showed a subtle changeof the pensive temper, and began to defy poor Don Juste Lopezin his Presidential tribune with an effrontery to whichthe poor man could only respond by a dazed smoothingof his beard and the ringing of the presidential bell. Then,when the downfall of the Ribierist cause became confirmedbeyond the shadow of a doubt, they have blossomed intoconvinced Liberals, acting together as if they were Siamesetwins, and ultimately taking charge, as it were, of the riot inthe name of Monterist principles.‘Their last move of eight o’clock last night was to organizethemselves into a Monterist Committee which sits, as far asI know, in a posada kept by a retired Mexican bull-fighter, agreat politician, too, whose name I have forgotten. Thencethey have issued a communication to us, the Goths and Paralyticsof the Amarilla Club (who have our own committee),inviting us to come to some provisional understanding fora truce, in order, they have the impudence to say, that thenoble cause of Liberty ‘should not be stained by the criminalexcesses of Conservative selfishness!’ As I came out tosit with Nostromo on the cathedral steps the club was busyconsidering a proper reply in the principal room, litteredwith exploded cartridges, with a lot of broken glass, bloodsmears, candlesticks, and all sorts of wreckage on the floor.But all this is nonsense. Nobody in the town has any realpower except the railway engineers, whose men occupy the