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

Italian—the publication of the British and Foreign Bible Society,bound in a dark leather cover. In periods of politicaladversity, in the pauses of silence when the revolutionistsissued no proclamations, Giorgio earned his living with thefirst work that came to hand—as sailor, as dock labourer onthe quays of Genoa, once as a hand on a farm in the hillsabove Spezzia—and in his spare time he studied the thickvolume. He carried it with him into battles. Now it was hisonly reading, and in order not to be deprived of it (the printwas small) he had consented to accept the present of a pairof silver-mounted spectacles from Senora Emilia Gould,the wife of the Englishman who managed the silver minein the mountains three leagues from the town. She was theonly Englishwoman in Sulaco.Giorgio Viola had a great consideration for the English.This feeling, born on the battlefields of Uruguay, was fortyyears old at the very least. Several of them had pouredtheir blood for the cause of freedom in America, and thefirst he had ever known he remembered by the name ofSamuel; he commanded a negro company under Garibaldi,during the famous siege of Montevideo, and died heroicallywith his negroes at the fording of the Boyana. He, Giorgio,had reached the rank of ensign-alferez-and cooked forthe general. Later, in Italy, he, with the rank of lieutenant,rode with the staff and still cooked for the general. He hadcooked for him in Lombardy through the whole campaign;on the march to Rome he had lassoed his beef in the Campagnaafter the American manner; he had been wounded inthe defence of the Roman Republic; he was one of the four