Page 109 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left by the
conquerors proclaimed the disregard of human labour, the
tribute-labour of vanished nations. The power of king and
church was gone, but at the sight of some heavy ruinous
pile overtopping from a knoll the low mud walls of a vil-
lage, Don Pepe would interrupt the tale of his campaigns
to exclaim—
‘Poor Costaguana! Before, it was everything for the Pa-
dres, nothing for the people; and now it is everything for
those great politicos in Sta. Marta, for negroes and thieves.’
Charles talked with the alcaldes, with the fiscales, with
the principal people in towns, and with the caballeros on
the estates. The commandantes of the districts offered him
escorts—for he could show an authorization from the Su-
laco political chief of the day. How much the document had
cost him in gold twenty-dollar pieces was a secret between
himself, a great man in the United States (who condescend-
ed to answer the Sulaco mail with his own hand), and a
great man of another sort, with a dark olive complexion
and shifty eyes, inhabiting then the Palace of the Intenden-
cia in Sulaco, and who piqued himself on his culture and
Europeanism generally in a rather French style because he
had lived in Europe for some years—in exile, he said. How-
ever, it was pretty well known that just before this exile he
had incautiously gambled away all the cash in the Custom
House of a small port where a friend in power had procured
for him the post of subcollector. That youthful indiscretion
had, amongst other inconveniences, obliged him to earn
his living for a time as a cafe waiter in Madrid; but his tal-

10 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard