Page 44 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Italian—the publication of the British and Foreign Bible So-
ciety, bound in a dark leather cover. In periods of political
adversity, in the pauses of silence when the revolutionists
issued no proclamations, Giorgio earned his living with the
first work that came to hand—as sailor, as dock labourer on
the quays of Genoa, once as a hand on a farm in the hills
above Spezzia—and in his spare time he studied the thick
volume. He carried it with him into battles. Now it was his
only reading, and in order not to be deprived of it (the print
was small) he had consented to accept the present of a pair
of silver-mounted spectacles from Senora Emilia Gould,
the wife of the Englishman who managed the silver mine
in the mountains three leagues from the town. She was the
only Englishwoman in Sulaco.
Giorgio Viola had a great consideration for the English.
This feeling, born on the battlefields of Uruguay, was for-
ty years old at the very least. Several of them had poured
their blood for the cause of freedom in America, and the
first he had ever known he remembered by the name of
Samuel; he commanded a negro company under Garibaldi,
during the famous siege of Montevideo, and died heroically
with his negroes at the fording of the Boyana. He, Gior-
gio, had reached the rank of ensign-alferez-and cooked for
the general. Later, in Italy, he, with the rank of lieutenant,
rode with the staff and still cooked for the general. He had
cooked for him in Lombardy through the whole campaign;
on the march to Rome he had lassoed his beef in the Cam-
pagna after the American manner; he had been wounded in
the defence of the Roman Republic; he was one of the four