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Poverty, misery, starvation! Where had he heard these words? The anger of a dying woman had prophesied that fate for his folly. It looked as if it would come true very quickly. And the leperos would laugh she had said.
Indeed, there was little to be said on his own side, as the Mexican ministry was absolutely opposed to the project, and any change of policy must depend upon a change in the imperial cabinet. His Excellency, however, seemed in high good humor. As we came out, he merrily challenged us to run downhill, much to the astonishment of the few leperos whom we happened to meet.
These were not a people striving for justice, but thieves. Even to defend his life against them was a sort of degradation for a man who had been one of Garibaldi's immortal thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He had an immense scorn for this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, who did not know the meaning of the word "liberty."
The palaces of the great were no protection against these infuriated peons, and women who boasted of titles of nobility were not safe. The wealth that generations of unjust monopolists had accumulated was scattered to the winds. Leperos now rioted on carpets from Brussels and on cushions of Oriental stuffs, and quaffed the choice wines of Madeira and Champagne.
We encounter the same brown adobes everywhere; the same villainous-looking leperos lounging at the corners; the same bare-legged, slippered wenches; the same strings of belaboured donkeys; the same shrill and detestable cries. We pass by a ruinous-looking house in a remote quarter. Our ears are saluted by voices from within. We hear shouts of "Mueran los Yankies! Abajo los Americanos!"
The roasting of a human victim at the auto da fe was a purely democratic institution. The leperos, who were beneath the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, felt none of the terrors that haunted the rich even in night visions.
Besides these grand people there were employes of the mines of less note, clerks of the comerciantes, young farmers of the valley, gambucinos, vaqueros, ciboleros, and even "leperos" of the town, shrouded in their cheap serapes. A motley throng was the fandango. The music consisted of a bandolon, a harp, and fiddle, and the dances were the waltz, the bolero, and the coona.
In that clear morning light, brighter than twilight, Nostromo saw right across the vast Plaza, at the end of the street beyond the cathedral, a mounted man apparently in difficulties with a yelling knot of leperos. At once he said to me, 'That's a stranger. He ran out immediately, and they rallied round him.
Captain Zuten fell in the subsequent assault upon Chapultepec. Colonel Le Noir entered the city of Mexico with the victorious army, but on the subsequent day, being engaged in a street skirmish with the leperos, or liberated convicts, he fell mortally wounded by a copper bullet, and he was now dying by inches at his quarters near the Grand Cathedral.
Fifty per cent. of that murdering mob were professional bandits from the Campo, sir, but there wasn't one that hadn't heard of Nostromo. As to the town leperos, sir, the sight of his black whiskers and white teeth was enough for them. They quailed before him, sir. That's what the force of character will do for you."
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