But to the little hook-nosed man from Esmeralda, anxious about
the export of hides, the silence of Charles Gould portended a failure.
Evidently this was no time for extending a modest man's business. He
enveloped in a swift mental malediction the whole country, with all
its inhabitants, partisans of Ribiera and Montero alike; and there were
incipient tears in his mute anger at the thought of the innumerable
ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy expanse of the Campo, with its
single palms rising like ships at sea within the perfect circle of the
horizon, its clumps of heavy timber motionless like solid islands
of leaves above the running waves of grass. There were hides there,
rotting, with no profit to anybody--rotting where they had been dropped
by men called away to attend the urgent necessities of political
revolutions. The practical, mercantile soul of Senor Hirsch rebelled
against all that foolishness, while he was taking a respectful but
disconcerted leave of the might and majesty of the San Tome mine in the
person of Charles Gould. He could not restrain a heart-broken murmur,
wrung out of his very aching heart, as it were.
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