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

were very much alike in appearance, both bald, with bunchesof crisp hair above their ears, arguing the presence ofsome negro blood. Only Pedro was smaller than the general,more delicate altogether, with an ape-like faculty for imitatingall the outward signs of refinement and distinction, andwith a parrot-like talent for languages. Both brothers hadreceived some elementary instruction by the munificenceof a great European traveller, to whom their father had beena body-servant during his journeys in the interior of thecountry. In General Montero’s case it enabled him to risefrom the ranks. Pedrito, the younger, incorrigibly lazy andslovenly, had drifted aimlessly from one coast town to another,hanging about counting-houses, attaching himself tostrangers as a sort of valet-de-place, picking up an easy anddisreputable living. His ability to read did nothing for himbut fill his head with absurd visions. His actions were usuallydetermined by motives so improbable in themselves asto escape the penetration of a rational person.Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession inSta. Marta had credited him with the possession of saneviews, and even with a restraining power over the general’severlastingly discontented vanity. It could never haveentered his head that Pedrito Montero, lackey or inferiorscribe, lodged in the garrets of the various Parisian hotelswhere the Costaguana Legation used to shelter its diplomaticdignity, had been devouring the lighter sort of historicalworks in the French language, such, for instance as thebooks of Imbert de Saint Amand upon the Second Empire.But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a brilliant