Page 45 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

fugitives who, with the general, carried out of the woods
the inanimate body of the general’s wife into the farmhouse
where she died, exhausted by the hardships of that terri-
ble retreat. He had survived that disastrous time to attend
his general in Palermo when the Neapolitan shells from
the castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked for him
on the field of Volturno after fighting all day. And every-
where he had seen Englishmen in the front rank of the army
of freedom. He respected their nation because they loved
Garibaldi. Their very countesses and princesses had kissed
the general’s hands in London, it was said. He could well
believe it; for the nation was noble, and the man was a saint.
It was enough to look once at his face to see the divine force
of faith in him and his great pity for all that was poor, suf-
fering, and oppressed in this world.
The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to
a vast humanitarian idea which inspired the thought and
stress of that revolutionary time, had left its mark upon
Giorgio in a sort of austere contempt for all personal advan-
tage. This man, whom the lowest class in Sulaco suspected
of having a buried hoard in his kitchen, had all his life de-
spised money. The leaders of his youth had lived poor, had
died poor. It had been a habit of his mind to disregard
to-morrow. It was engendered partly by an existence of ex-
citement, adventure, and wild warfare. But mostly it was a
matter of principle. It did not resemble the carelessness of
a condottiere, it was a puritanism of conduct, born of stern
enthusiasm like the puritanism of religion.
This stern devotion to a cause had cast a gloom upon

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard