Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART FIRST: THE SILVER OF THE MINE 6. CHAPTER SIX (continued)

His way would lie along the old Spanish road--the Camino Real of
popular speech--the only remaining vestige of a fact and name
left by that royalty old Giorgio Viola hated, and whose very
shadow had departed from the land; for the big equestrian statue
of Charles IV at the entrance of the Alameda, towering white
against the trees, was only known to the folk from the country
and to the beggars of the town that slept on the steps around the
pedestal, as the Horse of Stone. The other Carlos, turning off to
the left with a rapid clatter of hoofs on the disjointed pavement
--Don Carlos Gould, in his English clothes, looked as
incongruous, but much more at home than the kingly cavalier
reining in his steed on the pedestal above the sleeping leperos,
with his marble arm raised towards the marble rim of a plumed
hat.

The weather-stained effigy of the mounted king, with its vague
suggestion of a saluting gesture, seemed to present an
inscrutable breast to the political changes which had robbed it
of its very name; but neither did the other horseman, well known
to the people, keen and alive on his well-shaped, slate-coloured
beast with a white eye, wear his heart on the sleeve of his
English coat. His mind preserved its steady poise as if sheltered
in the passionless stability of private and public decencies at
home in Europe. He accepted with a like calm the shocking manner
in which the Sulaco ladies smothered their faces with pearl
powder till they looked like white plaster casts with beautiful
living eyes, the peculiar gossip of the town, and the continuous
political changes, the constant "saving of the country," which to
his wife seemed a puerile and bloodthirsty game of murder and
rapine played with terrible earnestness by depraved children. In
the early days of her Costaguana life, the little lady used to
clench her hands with exasperation at not being able to take the
public affairs of the country as seriously as the incidental
atrocity of methods deserved. She saw in them a comedy of naive
pretences, but hardly anything genuine except her own appalled
indignation. Charles, very quiet and twisting his long
moustaches, would decline to discuss them at all. Once, however,
he observed to her gently--