16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
God between us and evil, my dear Joseph,
he began, but I believe I can report
an uncommonly promising beginning,
an uncommonly promising situation,
with things moving at an
extraordinary, dreamlike speed. To begin
with I was introduced to General
Hurtado, a former Knight of Malta, who,
though a soldier, is very much in favour
of independence, partly because
Charles IV was rude to his father but
even more because both the present
Viceroy and his predecessor seemed to
him trifling ill-bred upstarts; this is not
an unusual pattern in Spain and here
the animosity is very much increased by
the fact that in a letter the present Viceroy
omitted the Excelenzia to which Hurtado
is by courtesy entitled; yet what is