Devout, and gifted
with the hot impulse of youth, he acted precisely as he would have
acted in Russia under a similar provocation. With a third gesture, one
of abhorrence and ungovernable fury, he threw the box in the
tobacconist's face.
And there the matter, once more, might have rested, had the salesman
been a Russian. Russians understand frank dealing.
He happened to be a native.
Fully to appreciate what followed, it is necessary to bear in mind that
local tobacconists are in a somewhat anomalous position. They occupy a
social status superior to those of many other countries. They are not
private merchants or ordinary citizens; they are, in a manner, servants
of the State. A native tobacconist is empowered to dispense CARTA
BOLLATA, which is the official stamped paper used for contracts and
other legal documents requiring registration; he deals in tobacco and
postage stamps--government monopolies; he sells, by special licence, wax
vestas, on each box of which there is a duty so minute as not to be
felt by the individual purchaser and yet, in its cumulative effect, so
great as to enable the State to pay, out of this source of revenue
alone, for the upkeep of all its colonial judges at a monthly salary of
forty-five francs apiece.
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