had helped so much the victorious career of his brother the
general. The influence which that man, brought up in coast towns,
acquired in a short time over the plainsmen of the Republic can be
ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so effective a kind that it
must have appeared to those violent men but little removed from a state
of utter savagery, as the perfection of sagacity and 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 honourable; 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 success 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 by his gift of plausibility
the chiefs of the Ribierist movement in the capital, and even the acute
agent of the San Tome mine had failed to understand him thoroughly. At
once he had obtained an enormous influence over his brother. They were
very much alike in appearance, both bald, with bunches of crisp hair
above their ears, arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro
was smaller than the general, more delicate altogether, with an
ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward signs of refinement and
distinction, and with a parrot-like talent for languages. Both brothers
had received s