Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
rious asset in the country's finance, and, what was more, in the private budgets of many officials as well. It was traditional. It was known. It was staid. It was credible. Every Minister of Interior drew a salary from the San Tomé mine. It was natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister of the Interior and President of the Council in his brother's government. The Duc de Morny had occupied those high posts during the Second French Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself.
A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured for his Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered absolutely necessary by the labors and the pomps of his entry into Sulaco, had been getting hold of the administrative machine by making appointments, giving orders, and signing proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould in the audience-room, his Excellency managed with his well-known skill to conceal his annoyance and consternation. He had begun at first to talk loftily of confiscation, but the want of all proper feeling and mobility in the Señor Administrador's features ended by affecting adversely his power of masterful expression. Charles Gould had repeated: "The government can certainly bring about the destruction of the San Tomé mine if it likes; but without me it can do nothing else." It was an alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to hurt the sensibilities of a politician whose mind is bent upon the spoils of victory. And Charles Gould said also that the destruction of the San Tomé mine would cause the ruin of other undertakings, the withdrawal of European capital, the withholding, most probably, of the
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