This caveat, which is set apart to emphasize its significance, suggests that accepting one passion is as fatal as accepting any. Decoud's love for Antonia has already embroiled him in Costaguana politics and prompted him to invent a counter-revolutionary scheme which will eventually lead to his death. Compare this reflection, at the birth of Decoud's scheme, with Charles Gould's at the start of his bribery, that the mine had "decoyed him further than he meant to go."