Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 5. CHAPTER FIVE (continued)

These were the results of the Grand Vicar's zeal. Even from the
short allocution to the troops on the Plaza (which only the first
ranks could have heard) he had not been able to keep out his
fixed idea of an outraged Church waiting for reparation from a
penitent country. The political Gefe had been exasperated. But
he could not very well throw the brother-in-law of Don Jose into
the prison of the Cabildo. The chief magistrate, an easy-going
and popular official, visited the Casa Gould, walking over after
sunset from the Intendencia, unattended, acknowledging with
dignified courtesy the salutations of high and low alike. That
evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gould and had hissed
out to him that he would have liked to deport the Grand Vicar out
of Sulaco, anywhere, to some desert island, to the Isabels, for
instance. "The one without water preferably--eh, Don Carlos?" he
had added in a tone between jest and earnest. This uncontrollable
priest, who had rejected his offer of the episcopal palace for a
residence and preferred to hang his shabby hammock amongst the
rubble and spiders of the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had
taken into his head to advocate an unconditional pardon for
Hernandez the Robber! And this was not enough; he seemed to have
entered into communication with the most audacious criminal the
country had known for years. The Sulaco police knew, of course,
what was going on. Padre Corbelan had got hold of that reckless
Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores, the only man fit for such an
errand, and had sent a message through him. Father Corbelan had
studied in Rome, and could speak Italian. The Capataz was known
to visit the old Dominican Convent at night. An old woman who
served the Grand Vicar had heard the name of Hernandez
pronounced; and only last Saturday afternoon the Capataz had been
observed galloping out of town. He did not return for two days.
The police would have laid the Italian by the heels if it had not
been for fear of the Cargadores, a turbulent body of men, quite
apt to raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern
Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the money in
the pockets of the railway workmen. The populace was made
restless by Father Corbelan's discourses. And the first
magistrate explained to Charles Gould that now the province was
stripped of troops any outbreak of lawlessness would find the
authorities with their boots off, as it were.