The man who imagines the new Occidental Republic prides himself on his lack of faith in anything. He is moved by love, which is defined as "the strongest of illusions"(92) by Conrad.
The night before he and Nostromo set out in a boat with the silver, he paces the floor of the Albergo of United Italy, before the picture of Garibaldi, "the Fathful Hero [who] seemed to look dimly ....at the man with no faith in anything except the truth of his own sensations"( 209).
"In the most skeptical heart there lurks at such moments, when the chances of existence are involved, the desire to leave a correct impression of the feelings, like a light by which the action may be seen when the personality is gone, gone where no light can ever reach the truth which every death takes out of the world"(210).
Suggesting a strength latent in a profound cynicism, Decoud writes, "I have the feeling of a great solitude around he [he continued]. Is it, perhaps, because I am the only man with a definite idea in his head, in the complete collapse of every resolve, intention and hope about me?'"(210).
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