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

uglier than ever in the light of failure. His taciturnity, assumedwith a purpose, had prevented him from tamperingopenly with his thoughts; but the Gould Concession hadinsidiously corrupted his judgment. He might have known,he said to himself, leaning over the balustrade of the corredor,that Ribierism could never come to anything. The minehad corrupted his judgment by making him sick of bribingand intriguing merely to have his work left alone from dayto day. Like his father, he did not like to be robbed. It exasperatedhim. He had persuaded himself that, apart fromhigher considerations, the backing up of Don Jose’s hopes ofreform was good business. He had gone forth into the senselessfray as his poor uncle, whose sword hung on the wall ofhis study, had gone forth—in the defence of the commonestdecencies of organized society. Only his weapon was thewealth of the mine, more far-reaching and subtle than anhonest blade of steel fitted into a simple brass guard.More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon ofwealth, double-edged with the cupidity and misery ofmankind, steeped in all the vices of self-indulgence as in aconcoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very cause forwhich it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly in thehand. There was nothing for it now but to go on using it. Buthe promised himself to see it shattered into small bits beforehe let it be wrenched from his grasp.After all, with his English parentage and English upbringing,he perceived that he was an adventurer in Costaguana,the descendant of adventurers enlisted in a foreign legion,of men who had sought fortune in a revolutionary war, who