Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 7. CHAPTER SEVEN (continued)

"Their last move of eight o'clock last night was to organize
themselves into a Monterist Committee which sits, as far as I
know, in a posada kept by a retired Mexican bull-fighter, a great
politician, too, whose name I have forgotten. Thence they have
issued a communication to us, the Goths and Paralytics of the
Amarilla Club (who have our own committee), inviting us to come
to some provisional understanding for a truce, in order, they
have the impudence to say, that the noble cause of Liberty
'should not be stained by the criminal excesses of Conservative
selfishness!' As I came out to sit with Nostromo on the cathedral
steps the club was busy considering a proper reply in the
principal room, littered with exploded cartridges, with a lot of
broken glass, blood smears, candlesticks, and all sorts of
wreckage on the floor. But all this is nonsense. Nobody in the
town has any real power except the railway engineers, whose men
occupy the dismantled houses acquired by the Company for their
town station on one side of the Plaza, and Nostromo, whose
Cargadores were sleeping under the arcades along the front of
Anzani's shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the Intendencia
saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the Plaza, in a high flame
swaying right upon the statue of Charles IV. The dead body of a
man was lying on the steps of the pedestal, his arms thrown wide
open, and his sombrero covering his face--the attention of some
friend, perhaps. The light of the flames touched the foliage of
the first trees on the Alameda, and played on the end of a side
street near by, blocked up by a jumble of ox-carts and dead
bullocks. Sitting on one of the carcasses, a lepero, muffled up,
smoked a cigarette. It was a truce, you understand. The only
other living being on the Plaza besides ourselves was a Cargador
walking to and fro, with a long, bare knife in his hand, like a
sentry before the Arcades, where his friends were sleeping. And
the only other spot of light in the dark town were the lighted
windows of the club, at the corner of the Calle."