ome elementary instruction by the munificence of a great
European traveller, to whom their father had been a body-servant during
his journeys in the interior of the country. In General Montero's
case it enabled him to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger,
incorrigibly lazy and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from one coast
town to another, hanging about counting-houses, attaching himself
to strangers as a sort of valet-de-place, picking up an easy and
disreputable living. His ability to read did nothing for him but fill
his head with absurd visions. His actions were usually determined by
motives so improbable in themselves as to escape the penetration of a
rational person.

Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession in Sta. Marta
had credited him with the possession of sane views, and even with a
restraining power over the general's everlastingly discontented vanity.
It could never have entered his head that Pedrito Montero, lackey or
inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets of the various Parisian hotels
where the Costaguana Legation used to shelter its diplomatic dignity,
had been devouring the lighter sort of historical works in the French
language, such, for instance as the books of Imbert de Saint Amand upon
the Second Empire. But Pedrito had been struck by the splendour of a
brilliant court, and had conceived the idea of an existence for himself
where, like the Duc de Morny, he would associate the command of every
pleasure with the conduct of political affairs and enjoy power supremely
in every way. Nobody could have guessed that. And yet this was one of
the immediate causes of the Monterist Revolution. This will appear less
incredible by the reflection that the fundamental causes were the
same as ever, rooted in the political immaturity of the people, in the
indolence of the upper classes and the mental darkness of the lower.

Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother the road wide
open to his wildest imaginings. This was what made the Monterist
pronunciamiento so unpreventable. The general himself probably could
have been bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched on a
diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who had egged him on
from first to last. He wanted to become the most brilliant statesman
of South America. He did not desire supreme power. He would have been
afraid of its labour and risk, in fact. Before all, Pedrito Montero,
taught by his European experience, meant