Compare the narrator's encouragement here with his dash of cold water on the romantic language of Decoud and Antonia ("His whisper could not have carried so far," ). We are in a self-consciously romantic style now, which, continuing below in Nostromo's dialogue, serves to enhance the fairy-tale quality of the utopian socialist ideal that Giselle represents.

Then too, this is far from the first hint in the novel that organic nature has a living quality which should be respected. If on the one hand this line undercuts romantic hope by pushing it too high, on the other hand it evokes all the priceless living values of the Earth that progress and politics ignore.