Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, "Decoud! Decoud!" He
hobbled about the room with slight, angry laughs. Many years ago
both his ankles had been seriously damaged in the course of a
certain investigation conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a
commission composed of military men. Their nomination had been
signified to them unexpectedly at the dead of night, with
scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a tempestuous voice, by
Guzman Bento. The old tyrant, maddened by one of his sudden
accesses of suspicion, mingled spluttering appeals to their
fidelity with imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and
casements of the castle on the hill had been already filled with
prisoners. The commission was charged now with the task of
discovering the iniquitous conspiracy against the Citizen-Saviour
of his country.

Their dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into a hasty
ferocity of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was not accustomed to
wait. A conspiracy had to be discovered. The courtyards of the
castle resounded with the clanking of leg-irons, sounds of blows,
yells of pain; and the commission of high officers laboured
feverishly, concealing their distress and apprehensions from each
other, and especially from their secretary, Father Beron, an army
chaplain, at that time very much in the confidence of the
Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big round-shouldered man, with
an unclean-looking, overgrown tonsure on the top of his flat
head, of a dingy, yellow complexion, softly fat, with greasy
stains all down the front of his lieutenant's uniform, and a
small cross embroidered in white cotton on his left breast. He
had a heavy nose and a pendant lip. Dr. Monygham remembered him
still. He remembered him against all the force of his will
striving its utmost to forget. Father Beron had been adjoined to
the commission by Guzman Bento expressly for the purpose that his
enlightened zeal should assist them in their labours. Dr.
Monygham could by no manner of means forget the zeal of Father
Beron, or his face, or the pitiless, monotonous voice in which he
pronounced the words, "Will you confess now?"