Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

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

By this he meant to express his faith in destiny in words
suitable to his intelligence, which was unskilled in the
presentation of general ideas. His intelligence was nourished on
facts; and Charles Gould, whose imagination had been permanently
affected by the one great fact of a silver mine, had no objection
to this theory of the world's future. If it had seemed
distasteful for a moment it was because the sudden statement of
such vast eventualities dwarfed almost to nothingness the actual
matter in hand. He and his plans and all the mineral wealth of
the Occidental Province appeared suddenly robbed of every vestige
of magnitude. The sensation was disagreeable; but Charles Gould
was not dull. Already he felt that he was producing a favourable
impression; the consciousness of that flattering fact helped him
to a vague smile, which his big interlocutor took for a smile of
discreet and admiring assent. He smiled quietly, too; and
immediately Charles Gould, with that mental agility mankind will
display in defence of a cherished hope, reflected that the very
apparent insignificance of his aim would help him to success. His
personality and his mine would be taken up because it was a
matter of no great consequence, one way or another, to a man who
referred his action to such a prodigious destiny. And Charles
Gould was not humiliated by this consideration, because the thing
remained as big as ever for him. Nobody else's vast conceptions
of destiny could diminish the aspect of his desire for the
redemption of the San Tome mine. In comparison to the correctness
of his aim, definite in space and absolutely attainable within a
limited time, the other man appeared for an instant as a dreamy
idealist of no importance.

The great man, massive and benignant, had been looking at him
thoughtfully; when he broke the short silence it was to remark
that concessions flew about thick in the air of Costaguana. Any
simple soul that just yearned to be taken in could bring down a
concession at the first shot.