Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
virtue. The popular lore of all nations testifies that
duplicity and cunning, together with bodily strength,
were looked upon, even more than courage, as heroic
virtues by primitive mankind. To overcome your adversary was the great affair of life. Courage was taken
for granted. But the use of intelligence awakened
wonder and respect. Stratagems, providing they did
not fail, were honorable; the easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy evoked no feelings but those of
gladness, pride, and admiration. Not, perhaps, that
primitive men were more faithless than their descendants of to-day, but that they went straighter to their
aim and were more artless in their recognition of suc-
cess as the only standard of morality.
We have changed since. The use of intelligence awakens little wonder and less respect. But the ignorant and barbarous plainsmen engaging in civil strife followed willingly a leader who often managed to deliver their enemies bound, as it were.. into their hands. Pedro Montero had a talent for lulling his adversaries into a sense of security. And as men learn wisdom with extreme slowness, and are always ready to believe promises that flatter their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful time after time. Whether only a servant or some inferior official in the Costaguana legation in Paris, he had rushed back to his country directly he heard that his brother had emerged from the obscurity of his frontier commandancia. He had managed to deceive his gift of plausibility the chiefs of the Ribierist movement in the capital, and even the acute agent of the San Tomé mine had failed to understand him thoroughly. At once he had ob-
429
