ying at the same
time to force a piece of orange between the stiffening lips of the dying
man.

The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity and sufferings
of that incorrigible people; the cruel futility of lives and of deaths
thrown away in the vain endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the
problem. Unlike Decoud, Charles Gould could not play lightly a part in
a tragic farce. It was tragic enough for him in all conscience, but he
could see no farcical element. He suffered too much under a conviction
of irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and too idealistic
to look upon its terrible humours with amusement, as Martin Decoud,
the imaginative materialist, was able to do in the dry light of his
scepticism. To him, as to all of us, the compromises with his conscience
appeared uglier than ever in the light of failure. His taciturnity,
assumed with a purpose, had prevented him from tampering openly with
his thoughts; but the Gould Concession had insidiously corrupted his
judgment. He might have known, he said to himself, leaning over the
balustrade of the corredor, that Ribierism could never come to anything.
The mine had corrupted his judgment by making him sick of bribing and
intriguing merely to have his work left alone from day to day. Like
his father, he did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him. He had
persuaded himself that, apart from higher considerations, the backing up
of Don Jose's hopes of reform was good business. He had gone forth into
the senseless fray as his poor uncle, whose sword hung on the wall of
his study, had gone forth--in the defence of the commonest decencies
of organized society. Only his weapon was the wealth of the mine, more
far-reaching and subtle than an honest blade of steel fitted into a
simple brass guard.

More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of wealth, double-edged
with the cupidity and misery of mankind, steeped in all the vices of
self-indulgence as in a concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very
cause for which it is drawn, always ready to turn awkwardly in the hand.
There was nothing for it now but to go on using it. But he promised
himself to see it shattered into small bits before he let it be wrenched
from his grasp.

After all, with his English parentage and English upbringing, he
perceived that he was an adventurer in Costaguana, the descendant of
adventurers enlisted in a foreign legion, of men who had sought fortune
in a