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south next week—let us go. That Moraga is a fool! A man
like Montero is bribed. It’s the practice of the country. It’s
tradition —it’s politics. Read ‘Fifty Years of Misrule.’’
‘Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He believes—‘
‘I have the greatest tenderness for your father,’ he began,
hurriedly. ‘But I love you, Antonia! And Moraga has mis-
erably mismanaged this business. Perhaps your father did,
too; I don’t know. Montero was bribeable. Why, I suppose
he only wanted his share of this famous loan for national
development. Why didn’t the stupid Sta. Marta people give
him a mission to Europe, or something? He would have tak-
en five years’ salary in advance, and gone on loafing in Paris,
this stupid, ferocious Indio!’
‘The man,’ she said, thoughtfully, and very calm before
this outburst, ‘was intoxicated with vanity. We had all the
information, not from Moraga only; from others, too. There
was his brother intriguing, too.’
‘Oh, yes!’ he said. ‘Of course you know. You know ev-
erything. You read all the correspondence, you write all
the papers—all those State papers that are inspired here, in
this room, in blind deference to a theory of political purity.
Hadn’t you Charles Gould before your eyes? Rey de Sulaco!
He and his mine are the practical demonstration of what
could have been done. Do you think he succeeded by his
fidelity to a theory of virtue? And all those railway people,
with their honest work! Of course, their work is honest! But
what if you cannot work honestly till the thieves are sat-
isfied? Could he not, a gentleman, have told this Sir John
what’s-his-name that Montero had to be bought off—he

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard