Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 6. CHAPTER SIX (continued)

"Simplicity itself. Barrios has started, let him go on then; he
will hold Cayta, which is the door of the sea route to Sulaco.
They cannot send a sufficient force over the mountains. No; not
even to cope with the band of Hernandez. Meantime we shall
organize our resistance here. And for that, this very Hernandez
will be useful. He has defeated troops as a bandit; he will no
doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made a colonel or even a
general. You know the country well enough not to be shocked by
what I say, Mrs. Gould. I have heard you assert that this poor
bandit was the living,breathing example of cruelty, injustice,
stupidity, and oppression, that ruin men's souls as well as their
fortunes in this country. Well, there would be some poetical
retribution in that man arising to crush the evils which had
driven an honest ranchero into a life of crime. A fine idea of
retribution in that, isn't there?"

Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he spoke with
precision, very correctly, but with too many z sounds.

"Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your ailing
mothers and feeble old men, of all that population which you and
your husband have brought into the rocky gorge of San Tome. Are
you not responsible to your conscience for all these people? Is
it not worth while to make another effort, which is not at all so
desperate as it looks, rather than--"

Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm,
suggesting annihilation; and Mrs. Gould turned away her head with
a look of horror.

"Why don't you say all this to my husband?" she asked, without
looking at Decoud, who stood watching the effect of his words.

"Ah! But Don Carlos is so English," he began. Mrs. Gould
interrupted--

"Leave that alone, Don Martin. He's as much a Costaguanero--No!
He's more of a Costaguanero than yourself."