Page 451 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

in the private budgets of many officials as well. It was tra-
ditional. It was known. It was said. It was credible. Every
Minister of Interior drew a salary from the San Tome mine.
It was natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister of the
Interior and President of the Council in his brother’s Gov-
ernment. The Duc de Morny had occupied those high posts
during the Second French Empire with conspicuous advan-
tage to himself.
A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured
for His Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered abso-
lutely necessary by the labours and the pomps of his entry
into Sulaco, had been getting hold of the administrative ma-
chine by making appointments, giving orders, and signing
proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould in the audience
room, His Excellency managed with his well-known skill
to conceal his annoyance and consternation. He had be-
gun at first to talk loftily of confiscation, but the want of all
proper feeling and mobility in the Senor Administrador’s
features ended by affecting adversely his power of masterful
expression. Charles Gould had repeated: ‘The Government
can certainly bring about the destruction of the San Tome
mine if it likes; but without me it can do nothing else.’ It was
an alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to hurt
the sensibilities of a politician whose mind is bent upon the
spoils of victory. And Charles Gould said also that the de-
struction of the San Tome mine would cause the ruin of
other undertakings, the withdrawal of European capital,
the withholding, most probably, of the last instalment of the
foreign loan. That stony fiend of a man said all these things

0 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard