Page 176 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

tion to become a poet like that other foreigner of Spanish
blood, Jose Maria Heredia. In other moments he had, to
pass the time, condescended to write articles on European
affairs for the Semenario, the principal newspaper in Sta.
Marta, which printed them under the heading ‘From our
special correspondent,’ though the authorship was an open
secret. Everybody in Costaguana, where the tale of com-
patriots in Europe is jealously kept, knew that it was ‘the
son Decoud,’ a talented young man, supposed to be mov-
ing in the higher spheres of Society. As a matter of fact, he
was an idle boulevardier, in touch with some smart jour-
nalists, made free of a few newspaper offices, and welcomed
in the pleasure haunts of pressmen. This life, whose dreary
superficiality is covered by the glitter of universal blague,
like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by the spangles of
a motley costume, induced in him a Frenchified—but most
un-French—cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren in-
differentism posing as intellectual superiority. Of his own
country he used to say to his French associates: ‘Imagine
an atmosphere of opera-bouffe in which all the comic busi-
ness of stage statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all their farcical
stealing, intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead earnest.
It is screamingly funny, the blood flows all the time, and
the actors believe themselves to be influencing the fate of
the universe. Of course, government in general, any gov-
ernment anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality to a
discerning mind; but really we Spanish-Americans do over-
step the bounds. No man of ordinary intelligence can take
part in the intrigues of une farce macabre. However, these

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