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

duplicity and cunning, together with bodily strength, werelooked upon, even more than courage, as heroic virtues byprimitive mankind. To overcome your adversary was thegreat affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But theuse of intelligence awakened wonder and respect. Stratagems,providing they did not fail, were honourable; the easymassacre of an unsuspecting enemy evoked no feelings butthose of gladness, pride, and admiration. Not perhaps thatprimitive men were more faithless than their descendantsof to-day, but that they went straighter to their aim, andwere more artless in their recognition of success as the onlystandard of morality.We have changed since. The use of intelligence awakenslittle wonder and less respect. But the ignorant and barbarousplainsmen engaging in civil strife followed willingly aleader who often managed to deliver their enemies bound,as it were, into their hands. Pedro Montero had a talentfor lulling his adversaries into a sense of security. And asmen learn wisdom with extreme slowness, and are alwaysready to believe promises that flatter their secret hopes, PedroMontero was successful time after time. Whether onlya servant or some inferior official in the Costaguana Legationin Paris, he had rushed back to his country directly heheard that his brother had emerged from the obscurity ofhis frontier commandancia. He had managed to deceive byhis gift of plausibility the chiefs of the Ribierist movementin the capital, and even the acute agent of the San Tomemine had failed to understand him thoroughly. At once hehad obtained an enormous influence over his brother. They