 necessary for the wife of the
administrator of such an important institution as the San Tomé mine. For the San
Tomé mine was to become an institution, a rallying point for everything in the
province that needed order and stability to live. Security seemed to flow upon
this land from the mountain-gorge. The authorities of Sulaco had learned that
the San Tomé mine could make it worth their while to leave things and people
alone. This was the nearest approach to the rule of common-sense and justice
Charles Gould felt it possible to secure at first. In fact, the mine, with its
organization, its population growing fiercely attached to their position of
privileged safety, with its armoury, with its Don Pépé, with its armed body of
serenos (where, it was said, many an outlaw and deserter - and even some members
of Hernandez's band - had found a place), the mine was a power in the land. As a
certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had exclaimed with a hollow laugh, once,
when discussing the line of action taken by the Sulaco authorities at a time of
political crisis -
    »You call these men Government officials? They? Never! They are officials of
the mine - officials of the Concession - I tell you.«
    The prominent man (who was then a person in power, with a lemon-coloured
face and a very short and curly, not to say woolly, head of hair) went so far in
his temporary discontent as to shake his yellow fist under the nose of his
interlocutor, and shriek -
    »Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political Jefé, the chief of the
police, the chief of the customs, the general, all, all, are the officials of
that Gould.«
    Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative murmur would flow on for a
space in the ministerial cabinet, and the prominent man's passion would end in a
cynical shrug of the shoulders. After all, he seemed to say, what did it matter
as long as the minister himself was not forgotten during his brief day of
authority? But all the same, the unofficial agent of the San Tomé mine, working
for a good cause, had his moments of anxiety, which were reflected in his
letters to Don José Avellanos, his maternal uncle.
    »No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set foot on that part of
Costaguana which lies beyond the San Tomé bridge,« Don Pépé, used to assure Mrs.
Gould. »Except, of course, as an honoured guest - for our
