Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 5. CHAPTER FIVE (continued)

Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession in Sta.
Marta had credited him with the possession of sane views, and
even with a restraining power over the general's everlastingly
discontented vanity. It could never have entered his head that
Pedrito Montero, lackey or inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets
of the various Parisian hotels where the Costaguana Legation used
to shelter its diplomatic dignity, had been devouring the lighter
sort of historical works in the French language, such, for
instance as the books of Imbert de Saint Amand upon the Second
Empire. But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a
brilliant court, and had conceived the idea of an existence for
himself where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the
command of every pleasure with the conduct of political affairs
and enjoy power supremely in every way. Nobody could have guessed
that. And yet this was one of the immediate causes of the
Monterist Revolution. This will appear less incredible by the
reflection that the fundamental causes were the same as ever,
rooted in the political immaturity of the people, in the
indolence of the upper classes and the mental darkness of the
lower.

Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother the road wide
open to his wildest imaginings. This was what made the Monterist
pronunciamiento so unpreventable. The general himself probably
could have been bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched
on a diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who had
egged him on from first to last. He wanted to become the most
brilliant statesman of South America. He did not desire supreme
power. He would have been afraid of its labour and risk, in fact.
Before all, Pedrito Montero, taught by his European experience,
meant to acquire a serious fortune for himself. With this object
in view he obtained from his brother, on the very morrow of the
successful battle, the permission to push on over the mountains
and take possession of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land of future
prosperity, the chosen land of material progress, the only
province in the Republic of interest to European capitalists.
Pedrito Montero, following the example of the Duc de Morny, meant
to have his share of this prosperity. This is what he meant
literally. Now his brother was master of the country, whether as
President, Dictator, or even as Emperor--why not as an
Emperor?--he meant to demand a share in every enterprise--in
railways, in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land
companies, in each and every undertaking--as the price of his
protection. The desire to be on the spot early was the real cause
of the celebrated ride over the mountains with some two hundred
llaneros, an enterprise of which the dangers had not appeared at
first clearly to his impatience. Coming from a series of
victories, it seemed to him that a Montero had only to appear to
be master of the situation. This illusion had betrayed him into a
rashness of which he was becoming aware. As he rode at the head
of his llaneros he regretted that there were so few of them. The
enthusiasm of the populace reassured him. They yelled "Viva
Montero! Viva Pedrito!" In order to make them still more
enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had in
dissembling, he dropped the reins on his horse's neck, and with a
tremendous effect of familiarity and confidence slipped his hands
under the arms of Senores Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture,
with a ragged town mozo holding his horse by the bridle, he rode
triumphantly across the Plaza to the door of the Intendencia. Its
old gloomy walls seemed to shake in the acclamations that rent
the air and covered the crashing peals of the cathedral bells.