He heard their shrill
quarrellings, the squalling of their children, the grunting of their
pigs; he smelt the odours of the heaps of garbage in their courtyards:
and he was greatly disgusted. But he fed and clothed that shabby
multitude; those degenerate descendants of Portuguese conquerors; he was
their providence; he kept them singing his praises in the midst of their
laziness, of their dirt, of their immense and hopeless squalor: and he
was greatly delighted. They wanted much, but he could give them all they
wanted without ruining himself. In exchange he had their silent fear,
their loquacious love, their noisy veneration. It is a fine thing to be
a providence, and to be told so on every day of one's life. It gives one
a feeling of enormously remote superiority, and Willems revelled in
it. He did not analyze the state of his mind, but probably his greatest
delight lay in the unexpressed but intimate conviction that, should
he close his hand, all those admiring human beings would starve. His
munificence had demoralized them. An easy task. Since he descended
amongst them and married Joanna they had lost the little aptitude and
strength for work they might have had to put forth under the stress of
extreme necessity.
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