Page 168 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

could unsettle the public opinion in the capital was to be
avoided. Don Jose bowed to these arguments and tried to
dismiss from his mind the gold-laced portent in boots, and
with a sabre, made meaningless now at last, he hoped, in the
new order of things.
Less than six months after the President-Dictator’s vis-
it, Sulaco learned with stupefaction of the military revolt
in the name of national honour. The Minister of War, in
a barrack-square allocution to the officers of the artillery
regiment he had been inspecting, had declared the national
honour sold to foreigners. The Dictator, by his weak com-
pliance with the demands of the European powers—for the
settlement of long outstanding money claims—had showed
himself unfit to rule. A letter from Moraga explained af-
terwards that the initiative, and even the very text, of the
incendiary allocution came, in reality, from the other Mon-
tero, the ex-guerillero, the Commandante de Plaza. The
energetic treatment of Dr. Monygham, sent for in haste ‘to
the mountain,’ who came galloping three leagues in the
dark, saved Don Jose from a dangerous attack of jaundice.
After getting over the shock, Don Jose refused to let him-
self be prostrated. Indeed, better news succeeded at first.
The revolt in the capital had been suppressed after a night
of fighting in the streets. Unfortunately, both the Monteros
had been able to make their escape south, to their native
province of Entre-Montes. The hero of the forest march,
the victor of Rio Seco, had been received with frenzied ac-
clamations in Nicoya, the provincial capital. The troops in
garrison there had gone to him in a body. The brothers were

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