Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

She tossed back all her dark hair.

"Nobody calls out after me."

Old Giorgio contemplated his children thoughtfully. There was
two years difference between them. They had been born to him
late, years after the boy had died. Had he lived he would have
been nearly as old as Gian' Battista--he whom the English called
Nostromo; but as to his daughters, the severity of his temper,
his advancing age, his absorption in his memories, had prevented
his taking much notice of them. He loved his children, but girls
belong more to the mother, and much of his affection had been
expended in the worship and service of liberty.

When quite a youth he had deserted from a ship trading to La
Plata, to enlist in the navy of Montevideo, then under the
command of Garibaldi. Afterwards, in the Italian legion of the
Republic struggling against the encroaching tyranny of Rosas, he
had taken part, on great plains, on the banks of immense rivers,
in the fiercest fighting perhaps the world had ever known. He
had lived amongst men who had declaimed about liberty, suffered
for liberty, died for liberty, with a desperate exaltation, and
with their eyes turned towards an oppressed Italy. His own
enthusiasm had been fed on scenes of carnage, on the examples of
lofty devotion, on the din of armed struggle, on the inflamed
language of proclamations. He had never parted from the chief of
his choice--the fiery apostle of independence--keeping by his
side in America and in Italy till after the fatal day of
Aspromonte, when the treachery of kings, emperors, and ministers
had been revealed to the world in the wounding and imprisonment
of his hero--a catastrophe that had instilled into him a gloomy
doubt of ever being able to understand the ways of Divine
justice.