Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
edge of the hammock. With less confidence, but as ignorant as his flock, he asked the major what did he think was going to happen now.
Don Pépé, bolt upright in the chair, folded his hands peacefully on the hilt of his sword, standing perpendicular between his thighs, and answered that he did not know. The mine could be defended against any force likely to be sent to take possession. On the other hand, from the arid character of the valley, when the regular supplies from the Campo had been cut off, the population of the three villages could be starved into submission. Don Pépé exposed these contingencies with serenity to Father Romàn, who, as an old campaigner, was able to understand the reasoning of a military man. They talked with simplicity and directness. Father Romàn was saddened at the idea of his flock being scattered or else enslaved. He had no illusions as to their fate, not from penetration, but from long experience of political atrocities, which seemed to him fatal and unavoidable in the life of a state. The working of the usual public institutions presented itself to him most distinctly as a series of calamities overtaking private individuals and flowing logically from one another through hate, revenge, folly, and rapacity, as though they had been part of a divine dispensation. Father Román's clear-sightedness was served by an uninformed intelligence; but his heart, preserving its tenderness among scenes of carnage, spoliation, and violence, abhorred these calamities the more as his association with the victims was closer. He entertained towards the Indians of the valley feelings of paternal scorn. He had been marrying,
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