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."