I am a coffee-broker, and live at No. 37 Laurier Canal, Amsterdam. I am not accustomed to write novels or works of that kind; therefore it took me a long time before I could resolve to order a few extra quires of paper and begin this book, which you, dear reader, have just taken in hand, and which you must finish, whether you are a coffee-broker or anything else. Not only that I never wrote anything that resembled a novel, but I even do not like to read such things, because I am a man of business. For many years I have asked myself what is the use of such works, and I am astonished at the impudence with which many a poet or novelist dares to tell you stories which never happened, and often never could have happened at all. If I in my position,—I am a coffee-broker, and live at No. 37 Laurier Canal,—made a statement to a Principal, that is, a person who sells coffee, in which I related only a small part of the lies which form the greater part of poems and novels, he [2]would immediately cease to employ me, and go over to Busselinck and Waterman, who are likewise coffee-brokers,—but you need not know their address. Therefore I take good care not to write any novels, nor to advance any false statements. I have always remarked that persons who do so are often badly off. I am forty-three years of age, I have visited the Exchange for the last twenty years, and, therefore, I can come forward whenever you are in want of a person of experience. How many firms do I know which have been utterly ruined! And generally, when looking for the causes of their failure, it appeared to me that they must be attributed to the wrong direction which most of them followed in the beginning.

My maxims are, and will always be, Truth and Common-sense; making, of course, an exception with regard to the Holy Scriptures. The origin of this fault may be traced to our children’s poet, Van Alphen,1 in his very first line, about “dear little babies.” What the deuce could make that old gentleman declare himself to be an adorer of my little sister Gertrude, who had weak eyes, or of my brother Gerard, who always played with his nose? and yet, he says, “that he sang those poems inspired by love.” I often thought when a child, “My dear fellow, I should like to meet you once, and if you refused me the marbles which I should ask you for, or the [3]initials of my name in chocolate—my name is Batavus—then I should believe you to be a liar.” But I never saw Van Alphen; he was dead, I think, when he told us that my father was my best friend, and that my little dog was so grateful (we never kept any dogs, they are so very dirty); although I was much fonder of little Paul Winser, who lived near us in Batavier Street.

All lies! And yet in this manner education goes on:—“The new little sister came from the vegetable-woman in a big cabbage.” “All Dutchmen are brave and generous.” “The Romans were glad that the Batavians allowed them to live.” “The Bey of Tunis got a colic when he heard the Dutch colours flapping.” “The Duke of Alva was a monster.”2 “The ebb-tide (in 1672, I believe) lasted a little longer than usual, only to protect the Netherlands.” Nonsense! Holland has remained Holland because our forefathers knew how to manage their affairs, and because they had the true religion—that is the reason. And then came other lies. “A girl is an angel.” Whoever first discovered that never had any sisters. Love is a bliss; you fly with some dear object or other to the end of the earth. The earth has no end, and such love is all nonsense. Nobody can say that I do not live on good terms with my wife,—she is a daughter of Last and Co., coffee-brokers,—nobody can find fault with our marriage. I am a member of the [4]fashionable “Artis” club,3 and she has an Indian shawl which cost £7, 13s. 4d., but yet we never indulged in such a foolish love as would have urged us to fly to the extremities of the earth. When we married, we made an excursion to the Hague. She there bought some flannel, of which I still wear shirts; and further our love has never driven us. So, I say, it is all nonsense and lies! And should my marriage now be less happy than that of those persons who out of pure love become consumptive, or tear the hair out of their heads? Or do you think that my household is less orderly than it would be, if seventeen years ago I had promised my bride in verse that I should marry her? Stuff and nonsense! yet I could have done such a thing as well as any one else; for the making of verses is a profession certainly less difficult than ivory-turning, otherwise how could bon-bons with mottoes be so cheap? Only compare their price with that of two billiard-balls. I have no objection to verses. If you like to put the words into a line, very well; but do not say anything beyond the truth; thus,—

I will not say anything against that, if it is indeed four [5]o’clock, and it has really stopped raining. But if it is a quarter to three, then I, who do not put my words in verse, can say, “It is a quarter to three, and it has stopped raining.” But the rhymer, because it rains “no more,” is bound to say “four.” Either the time or the weather must be changed, and a lie is the result. And it is not rhyming alone that allures young people to untruth. Go to the theatre, and listen to all the lies they tell you. The hero of the piece is saved from being drowned by a person who is on the point of becoming a bankrupt. Then, as we are told, he gives his preserver half his fortune,—a statement that cannot be true, as I proceed to show. When lately my hat was blown by the wind into the Prinsen Canal, I gave the man twopence who brought it back to me, and he was satisfied. I know very well that I ought to have given a little more if he had saved my own self from drowning, but certainly not half my fortune; for it is evident that in such a case, falling twice into the water would quite ruin me. The worst of these scenes on the stage is, that people become so much accustomed to untruths, that they get into the habit of admiring and applauding them. I should like to throw all such applauders into the water, to see how many of them really meant that applause. I, who love truth, hereby give notice, that I won’t pay half my fortune for being fished up. He who is not satisfied with less, need not touch me. On Sundays only I should give a little more, on account [6]of my gold chain and best coat. Yes! many persons become corrupted by the stage, much more than by novels, for seeing is believing. With tinsel and lace cut out in paper, all looks so very attractive, that is to say, for children and men who are not accustomed to business. And even when they want to represent poverty, their representation is generally a lie. A girl whose father has become a bankrupt, works to support her family. Very well; you see her on the stage, sewing, knitting, or embroidering. Now, do count the stitches which she makes during a whole act. She talks, she sighs, she runs to the window, she does everything except work. Surely the family that can live by such work needs very little. This girl is, of course, the heroine. She has pushed some seducers down-stairs, and cries continually, “Oh, mother, mother!” and thus she represents Virtue. A nice virtue indeed, which takes a year in making a pair of stockings! Does not all this serve to give you false ideas of virtue, and of “labour for daily bread?” All folly and lies! Then her first lover, who was formerly a copying-clerk, but is now immensely rich, returns suddenly, and marries her. Lies again. He who has money does not marry a bankrupt’s daughter. You think that such a scene will do on the stage, as an exceptional case, but the audience will mistake the exception for the rule, and thus become demoralized by accustoming themselves to applaud on the stage, that which in the [7]world every respectable broker or merchant considers to be ridiculous madness. When I was married, we were thirteen of us at the office of my father-in-law, Last and Co.,—and a good deal of business was done there, I can assure you. And now for more lies on the stage:—When the hero walks away in a stiff, stage-like manner, to serve his native country, why does the back-door always open of itself?

And then this Virtue rewarded!—oh, oh! I have been these seventeen years a coffee-broker, at No. 37 Laurier Canal, and I have had a great deal of experience, but I am always much shocked when I see the dear, good truth so distorted. Rewarded Virtue, forsooth! just as if virtue was a trade commodity! It is not so in the world, and it is very good that it is not so, for where would be the real merit if virtue were always rewarded? Why then always invent such shameful lies? There is, for instance, Lucas, the warehouse-porter, who had been in the employ of Last and Co.’s father,—the firm was then Last and Meyer, but the Meyers are no longer in it,—he was really an honest man, in my opinion. Never was a single coffee-bean missing; he went to church very punctually; and was a teetotaller. When my father-in-law was at his country seat at Driebergen, this man kept the house, the cash, and everything. Once the bank paid him seventeen guilders too much, and he returned them. He is now too old and gouty to work, [8]and therefore starves, for our large business transactions require young men. Well, this Lucas has been a very virtuous man—but is he rewarded? Does a prince give him diamonds, or a fairy nice dinners? Certainly not; he is poor, and he remains poor, and that must be so. I cannot help him. We want active young men for our extensive business; but if I could do anything for him, his merit would be rewarded in an easy life, now that he is old. Then if all warehouse-porters, and everybody else became virtuous, all would be rewarded in this world, and there would remain no special reward for the good people hereafter. But on the stage they distort everything—turn everything into lies.

I too am virtuous, but do I ask a reward for that? When my affairs go on well, as they generally do; when my wife and children are healthy, so that I have nothing to do with doctors; when I can put aside every year a small sum for old age; when Fred behaves well, that he may be able to take my place when I retire to my country-seat near Driebergen,—then I am quite satisfied. But all this is only a natural consequence of circumstances, and because I attend to my business. I claim nothing for my virtue; and that I am a virtuous man is evident from my love for truth, which is second only to my great inclination to my Faith—I should like to convince you of this, dear reader, because it is my excuse for writing this book. Another passion equally strong is my love of business. [9]I am a coffee-broker, at No. 37 Laurier Canal. Well, reader, this book owes its existence to my inviolable love for truth, and my zeal for business. I will tell you how all this has happened. But as I must now leave you for some time, being obliged to go to the Exchange, I invite you to a second chapter. Pray, take this with you; it may be of service to you. Look here,—my card,—I am the “Co.,” since the Meyers went out—old Last is my father-in-law:—

Last & Co.,
Coffee-Brokers,
No. 37 Laurier Canal. [10]

Business is slack on the Coffee Exchange. The Spring Auction will make it right again. Don’t suppose, however, that we have nothing to do. At Busselinck and Waterman’s trade is slacker still. It is a strange world this: one gets a deal of experience by frequenting the Exchange for twenty years. Only fancy that they have tried—I mean Busselinck and Waterman—to do me out of the custom of Ludwig Stern. As I do not know whether you are familiar with the Exchange, I will tell you that Stern is an eminent coffee-merchant in Hamburg, who always employed Last and Co. Quite accidentally I found that out—I mean that bungling business of Busselinck and Waterman. They had offered to reduce the brokerage by one-fourth per cent. They are low fellows—nothing else. And now look what I have done to stop them. Any one in my place would perhaps have written to Ludwig Stern, “that we too would diminish the brokerage, and that we hoped for consideration on account of the long services of Last and Co.” [11]

I have calculated that our firm, during the last fifty years, has gained four hundred thousand guilders by Stern. Our connexion dates from the beginning of the continental system, when we smuggled Colonial produce and such like things from Heligoland. No, I won’t reduce the brokerage.

I went to the Polen coffee-house, ordered pen and paper, and wrote:—

“That because of the many honoured commissions received from North Germany, our business transactions had been extended”—[it is the simple truth]—“and that this necessitated an augmentation of our staff”—[it is the truth: no more than yesterday evening our bookkeeper was in the office after eleven o’clock to look for his spectacles];—“that, above all things, we were in great want of respectable, educated young men to conduct the German correspondence. That, certainly, there were many young Germans in Amsterdam, who possessed the requisite qualifications, but that a respectable firm”—[it is the very truth],—“seeing the frivolity and immorality of young men, and the daily increasing number of adventurers, and with an eye to the necessity of making correctness of conduct go hand in hand with correctness in the execution of orders”—[it is the truth, observe, and nothing but the truth],—“that such a firm—I mean Last and Co., coffee-brokers, 37 Laurier Canal—could not be anxious enough in engaging new hands.”

All that is the simple truth, reader. Do you know [12]that the young German who always stood at the Exchange, near the seventeenth pillar, has eloped with the daughter of Busselinck and Waterman? Our Mary, like her, will be thirteen years old in September.

“That I had the honour to hear from Mr. Saffeler”—[Saffeler travels for Stern]—“that the honoured head of the firm, Ludwig Stern, had a son, Mr. Ernest Stern, who wished for employment for some time in a Dutch house.”

“That I, mindful of this”—[here I referred again to the immorality of employés, and also to the history of that daughter of Busselinck and Waterman; it won’t do any harm to tell it],—“that I, mindful of this, wished, with all my heart, to offer Mr. Ernest Stern the German correspondence of our firm.”

From delicacy I avoided all allusion to honorarium or salary; yet I said:—

“That if Mr. Ernest Stern would like to stay with us, at 37 Laurier Canal, my wife would care for him as a mother, and have his linen mended in the house”—[that is the very truth, for Mary sews and knits very well],—and in conclusion I said, “that we were a religious family.”

The last sentence may do good, for the Sterns are Lutherans. I posted that letter. You understand that old Mr. Stern could not very well give his custom to Busselinck and Waterman, if his son were in our office. [13]I am very anxious for a reply. But to return to my book. Some time ago I walked one evening through Kalver Street, and stopped looking into a shop where a grocer was diligently sorting a quantity of—

“Java middling, fine, yellow, Cheribon coffee, slightly damaged,”

which interested me much, for I am very inquisitive. Suddenly I observed a gentleman standing next to me in front of a bookseller’s shop, whom I thought I had seen before, though I endeavoured in vain to recollect him. He, too, seemed to recognise me; for every moment we looked at one another. I must confess, that I really was too much interested in the adulterated coffee immediately to observe, what I saw afterwards, viz., that his clothes were very shabby; otherwise I should not have taken any notice of him; but all of a sudden I thought, perhaps he is a commercial traveller for a German firm, which is in need of a trustworthy broker. He had rather a German face, and appeared something of a traveller too; he was very fair, with blue eyes, and had something about him which made you think that he was a foreigner. Instead of a respectable winter-coat he wore a shawl or plaid, and looked as if he had just ended a long journey. I thought I saw a customer, and gave him an address card, “Last and Co., Coffee-brokers, 37 Laurier Canal.” He took it, and holding it near the gaslight looked at it, and said, [14]“I thank you, but I was mistaken; I thought I had the pleasure of seeing an old school-fellow, but … Last … that is not the right name.”

“Excuse me,” I said, for I am always polite, “I am Mr. Drystubble—Batavus Drystubble; Last and Co. is the firm, coffee-brokers, at No. 37 Laurier Canal.”

“Well, Drystubble, don’t you know me? Look me straight in the face.”

The more I looked him in the face, the more I remembered having seen him before; but, strange to say, his face made an impression on me as if I smelt foreign perfumes. Do not laugh at that, reader; by and by you will see how that was. I feel quite assured that he had not a drop of perfumery about him, and yet I smelt something very strong, something which reminded me of——then I knew him!

“Was it you,” I said, “who rescued me from the Greek?”

“To be sure,” said he, “and how are you?”

I told him that we were thirteen of us in our office, and that we had plenty to do, and then I asked him how he had got on, which I felt quite sorry for afterwards, for it appeared that his pecuniary circumstances were not prosperous, and I dislike poor people, because it is for the most part their own fault, as the Lord would not forsake a person who had served Him faithfully. If I had only said, “We are thirteen of us,” and “I wish you good-night,” then I should have got rid of him; but these [15]questions and replies made it every minute more difficult to shake him off. However, I must confess, that if I had shaken him off you would not have had this book to read, for it owes its existence to that meeting! I like to look at the bright side of everything, and those who do not are discontented creatures: I can’t bear them. Yes, yes, it was the same person who had rescued me out of the clutches of the Greek! Don’t think, however, that I had been taken prisoner by pirates, or that I had had a brawl in the Levant. I have told you already that I went, after my marriage, with my wife to the Hague, where we saw the Museum, and bought flannel in Veene Street,—the only excursion that my extensive business at Amsterdam ever allowed me. No; it was on my account that he gave a Greek a bloody nose, for always interfering with other people’s business. It was in the year 1834 I think, and in September, the annual fair-time at Amsterdam. As my parents intended to make a clergyman of me, I learned Latin. Afterwards, I often wondered why you must understand Latin to say in Dutch, “God is good.” Enough, I went to the Latin school, now called the Gymnasium, and there was the fair,—in Amsterdam, I mean. On the Wester Market were booths; and if you, reader, are an Amsterdammer, and about my age, you will remember that in one of them was a most beautiful girl with black eyes, dressed as a Greek; her father too was a Greek, or at least he had the appearance [16]of a Greek. They sold all sorts of perfumes. I was just old enough to think the girl very beautiful, without having the courage to speak to her. Such an attempt would have been fruitless; for a girl of eighteen thinks a boy of sixteen a child, and there she is quite right. Yet we schoolboys always went to the Wester Market to see that girl.

Now, he who stood before me with the plaid was once with us, though some years younger than the rest, and therefore too childish to look at the Grecian girl; but he was dux of our class,—for he was very clever, that I must confess,—and he was very fond of playing, romping, and fighting; therefore he was with us. While we looked from a distance at the Grecian girl (I think we were ten of us), and deliberated how we should set about making acquaintance with her, we made up our minds to put our money together to buy something. But then it was very difficult to know who should be so bold as to speak to the girl. Every one liked it, but nobody dared attempt it. We cast lots, and I was chosen. Now, I confess that I do not like to brave dangers; I am a husband and a father, and think every one who braves danger to be a fool: this you may read in the Bible. It is a great satisfaction for me to find that I think about danger and suchlike things exactly as I did many years ago. I have still the same opinion as I had on that very evening when I stood close to the Greek’s booth, with the twelve pence we had put together in my hand. But because of false shame, I dared [17]not say that I had not the courage to do it; besides, I had to advance against my will, for my companions pushed me, and soon I was standing before the booth.

I did not see the girl; I saw nothing. All became green and yellow before my eyes … I stammered out the First Aorist of I do not know which verb.…

“Plait-il?” said she. I recovered a little and continued,—“Μῆνιν ἀεῖδε, θεά,” and “that Egypt was a present from the Nile.”… I feel quite sure that I should have made her acquaintance if one of my companions had not at that moment given me such a punch in the back that I stumbled with much violence against the booth. I felt a grasp at my neck, a second one much lower, and before I had time to think about my position, I was inside the tent with the Greek, who told me in very intelligible French, that I was a “gamin,” and that he would call the “police.” Now, I was very near the girl, but it gave me no pleasure at all. I cried, and prayed for mercy, for I was much afraid. But there was no help for it; the Greek took hold of my arm, and kicked me. I looked for my comrades. We had just read that morning about Scævola, who put his hand in the fire——and in our Latin themes we thought it so fine and so elevated——Pooh! nobody stayed to put his hand in the fire for me!! So I thought. But all of a sudden, our friend of the Plaid, or Shawlman, as we shall call him, rushed through the back entrance into the booth. He was then neither [18]tall nor strong, and only thirteen years old, but he was a brave and nimble little fellow. I still see the sparkling of his eyes; he gave the Greek a blow with his fist, and I was saved. Afterwards I heard that the Greek drubbed him soundly, but as I have a steady principle never to meddle with other people’s business, I ran away immediately, and so I did not see it.

That is the reason why his face reminded me so much of perfumes, and how easy it is in Amsterdam to quarrel with a Greek.

Afterwards, whenever that man was with his booth on the Wester Market, I always went elsewhere to amuse myself.

As I am very fond of philosophical observations, I must be allowed to remark how strangely all things hang together in this world. If the eyes of that girl had been lighter, if her tresses had been shorter, or the boys had not pushed me against the booth, you would not now be reading this book: therefore be thankful for all that happened. Believe me, everything in the world is good, as it is, and those discontented men who are always full of complaints are not my friends. There you have Busselinck and Waterman …; but I must go on, for I have to finish my book before the great Spring Coffee Auction. To speak the truth—for I like truth—I felt it very unpleasant to meet that person again. I saw in a moment that he was not an acquaintance to be proud of. He looked very [19]pale, and when I asked him what o’clock it was, he didn’t know! These things a man observes who has frequented the Exchange for twenty years or so, and transacted business there.——I’ve witnessed many a crash.

I thought he would turn to the right, and therefore I went to the left; but, lo, he too turned to the left, and so I was in for a conversation with him; but I bore in mind that he did not know what o’clock it was, and perceived at the same time that his coat was buttoned up to his chin, which is a very bad sign, so I did not speak much. He told me that he had been in India, that he was married, and had children. All very well; but this was not very interesting to me. At the Kapelsteeg,1—I never before went through that steeg,2 because it is not considered respectable,—but this time I intended to turn to the right, and pass through the Kapelsteeg,—I waited till that little street was just behind us, to make him understand that his way was straight on, and then I said very politely—for I am always polite: one never knows whether he may not afterwards want to use a person:—“I am very much pleased that I have seen you again, Sir, … and … and, good-bye.… I have to go this way.” Then he looked like an idiot at me and sighed, and all of a sudden took hold of one of the buttons of my coat … “Dear Drystubble,” said he, “I have to ask you something.” [20]

I trembled all over. He did not know what o’clock it was, and had to ask me something! Of course I replied that “I had no time to spare, and had to go to the Exchange,” though it was evening;—but if you have frequented the Exchange for some twenty years … and a person asks you something without knowing what o’clock it is … I disengaged the button, bade him farewell in a polite manner—for I am always polite—and went through the Kapelsteeg, which I otherwise never do, because it is not fashionable, and fashionableness I like above all things. I hope that nobody saw me. [21]

The following day, when I came home from the Exchange, Fred told me that somebody had called to speak to me. According to the description it was Shawlman. How could he have found me out——oh, yes, I see, the card!

This made me think of taking my children away from school, for it is very annoying to be troubled twenty or thirty years afterwards by a school-companion who wears a shawl instead of a coat, and who does not know what o’clock it is. I have also forbidden Fred to go to the Wester Market when there are booths.

Next day I received a letter with a large parcel. I began at once to read:

“Dear Drystubble!” [I think he ought to have written ‘Sir,’ because I am a broker.] “Yesterday I called at your house with the intention of asking you a favour. I believe you are in good circumstances”—[that is true; we are thirteen of us in our office],—“and I should like to use your credit to bring about a matter of great importance [22]to me.”—[Should you not think that he would rather have given me a commission for the Spring Auction?]—“Through many misfortunes I stand somewhat in need of money.”—[Somewhat! he had no shirt on his back; this is what he calls somewhat!]—“I cannot give my dear wife everything that is necessary to make life agreeable, and the education of my children is, from pecuniary impediments, not as I should like it to be.”—[To make life agreeable——? education of children——? Do you think that he wishes to take a season ticket for his wife at the opera, and place his children in a gymnasium at Geneva? It was autumn, and very cold,—he lived in a garret, and without fire. When I received that letter I was ignorant of this, but afterwards I went to him, and I am still angry at the foolish style of his letter. What the deuce!——Whoever is poor may say it;——there must be poor people; that is necessary in society. If he does not ask charity, if he annoys nobody, I don’t care for his poverty, but disguising the matter is very improper. Now, let us see what more he has to say.]—“As I am obliged to provide for my household, I have resolved to make use of a talent which, as I believe, I am in possession of. I am a poet——”—[Pshaw! you know, reader, how I and all reasonable men think about that] “——and writer. Since childhood I have expressed my feelings in verse, and afterwards, too, I always wrote down in poetry the sensations of my soul. [23]I believe that I have made some valuable pieces, and I want a publisher for them. This, then, is the difficulty. I am unknown to the public, and the publishers judge of works more according to the reputation of the author than the value of the contents.”—[Exactly as we judge of the coffee, according to the reputation of the trademarks.]—“The merit of my work can only be established by publication; and the booksellers require payment in advance of all the expenses”—[There they are quite right]—“which is at present not convenient to me. I am, however, so convinced that my book would clear the expenses, that I could pledge my word for it, and as I am encouraged by our meeting of the day before yesterday,”—[That is what he calls being encouraged!]—“I have resolved to ask you to be surety for me to a bookseller for the expenses of a first edition, even if it were only a small book. I give you the choice of works for that first experiment. In the accompanying parcel you will find many manuscripts; from which you will see that I have thought, worked, and experienced much”—[I never heard that he had any business at all];—“and if I am not a stranger to the talent of expressing myself well, my ill success will not be due to any want of impressions. In hopes of a kind answer, I remain your old school-fellow”——[And he signed this with his name; but I make a secret of that, because I do not like to bring discredit on any one.] [24]

Dear reader, you can understand how foolish I looked in being made all at once a broker in verses. I am quite sure that if Shawlman—so I will continue to call him—had seen me by daylight, he would not have dared to ask me such a favour; for respectability and dignity cannot be concealed; but it was evening, and therefore I don’t mind.

Of course, I would have nothing to do with this nonsense. I should have returned the parcel, but that I did not know where he lived, and I heard nothing of him. I thought that he was ill, or dead. Last week there was a party at the Rosemeyers, who are sugar-brokers. Fred went out for the first time with us; he is sixteen, and I think it right that a young man at that age should see something of the world; otherwise he will go to the Wester Market, or somewhere else. The girls had been playing on the piano and singing, and at dessert they teased each other about something that seemed to have happened in the front room while we played at whist in the back room—something in which Fred was concerned.

“Yes, yes, Louise,” said Betsy Rosemeyer; “you did cry. Papa, Fred made Louise cry.”

My wife said that Fred should not go out again if he was so naughty; she thought that he had pinched Louise, or something like that, which is not proper, and I, too, made preparations to say a few words about it, [25]when Louise said: “No, no, Fred was very kind; I should like him to do it again!”

“What then?” He had not pinched her; he had been reciting, that was all. Of course the mistress of the house likes to have some fun at dessert,—it enlivens the company. Mrs. Rosemeyer thought that what had made Louise cry would amuse us too, and therefore asked Fred, who was as red as a turkey-cock, to repeat it. I could not understand what he had done; I knew his whole répertoire, which consisted of the “Wedding-Party of the Gods,” the books of the Old Testament in rhyme, and an episode from the “Wedding of Camacho,” which boys always like so much, because it is rather funny; and what there was in all this that could make any one cry was a riddle to me; it is true, a girl of that age weeps very soon.—“Come, Fred! Please do!”—and Fred began. As I do not like to stretch the curiosity of the reader, I will here at once state, that before leaving home they had opened Shawlman’s parcel, and Fred and Mary had picked out of it a piece of sentimentality, which afterwards gave me a great deal of trouble. This book owes its existence to that parcel, and in due time I will account for it quite becomingly; for I like to make it known that I love truth, and am a good man of business.—[Last and Co., coffee-brokers, at No. 37 Laurier Canal.]

Fred recited a thing full of nonsense. A young man wrote to his mother that he had been in love, and that [26]his sweetheart had married another—[there she was quite right I think]—yet that he nevertheless always loved his mother very much. Is that statement true or not? Do you think so many words are wanted to say that? At all events I had eaten a piece of bread and cheese, and nearly finished my second pear, before Fred finished his story. But Louise cried again, and the ladies said that it was very beautiful.

Then Fred, who, I believe, thought he had brought out a masterpiece, told them that he found it in a parcel sent to my house by the man with the shawl; and I explained to the gentlemen how that happened, but I said nothing about the Grecian girl, because Fred was present, neither did I speak of the Kapelsteeg. Every one thought that it was quite right on my part to get rid of that man. Presently you will see that there were other things in the parcel of more solid worth, some of which will appear in this book, because they concern the coffee-auctions of the Company.

Afterwards, the publisher asked me whether I would not add to the work the piece or poem which Fred had recited. I consented, but I wish it to be known that I am not responsible for the sentiments expressed. All stuff and nonsense. However, I withhold my observations from want of space. I will only remark that the poem was written at “Padang,” in 1843, and that this is of inferior mark—I mean the Padang coffee:— [27]

[The translator ventures with great diffidence, for he knows how much beauty and tenderness have been lost in the translation, to give an English version of the Poem.]

[32]

Before I go on, I must tell you that young Mr. Stern has come; he is a good fellow. He seems to be active and clever, but I believe that he—as the Germans call it, “Schwärmt.” Mary is thirteen. His outfit is very nice, and he has got a copybook, in which to practise the Dutch style. I wonder whether I shall soon receive an order from Ludwig Stern. Mary shall embroider a pair of slippers for him,—I mean to say for young Mr. Stern. Busselinck and Waterman have made a mistake,——a respectable broker does not supplant, that’s what I say. The day after the party at the Rosemeyers, who are sugar-merchants, I called Fred, and ordered him to fetch Shawlman’s parcel. You must know, reader, that I am very precise in my family as to Religion and Morality. Now then, yesterday evening, just when I was eating my first pear, I read in the face of one of the girls that there was something in a verse from the parcel that was not right. I myself had not listened, but I saw that Betsy crumbled her bread, and that was enough for me. You [33]will perceive, reader, that I am a man of the world. I made Fred hand over to me “the beautiful poem” of yesterday evening, and very soon saw the line which caused Betsy to crumble her bread. They speak there of a child on the breast of its mother,—I say nothing of that;—but: “which scarcely left the mother’s womb,”—that I disapproved,—to speak about that, I mean,—so did my wife. Mary is thirteen. Of “cabbage”1 and such things we do not speak; but to give all in this way its right name is not necessary, as I am a great lover of morality. So I made Fred, who knew it by heart, promise that he would not repeat it again,—at least not before he was member of Doctrina,2 because no young girls come there,—and then I put it in my writing-desk, I mean the verse. But I wanted to know whether there was anything else of an offensive nature in the parcel; I began to look and to inspect everything. I could not read all, for a great deal was written in foreign languages which I did not understand, but at last I caught sight of a treatise entitled “Account of the Coffee Culture in the Residency of Menado.” My heart leaped for joy, because I am a coffee-broker, at No. 37 Laurier Canal, and “Menado” is a very good mark. So this Shawlman, who made immoral verses, had been in the Coffee trade. I looked at the parcel with quite a different eye. I saw treatises in it which I did not completely understand, but they showed a knowledge of business. There were [34]statements, problems, computations, which I could not understand at all, and everything was done with so much care and exactness, that I, to speak plainly,—for I am a lover of truth,—thought this Shawlman, if perhaps the third clerk left,—a likely event, as he is old and dull,—could very well take his place. Of course I should like, first of all, to have testimony as to his honesty, religion, and respectability, for I will not take anybody into my office until I am satisfied on these points. This is a fixed principle with me. You have seen it in my letter to Ludwig Stern.

I did not care to show Fred that I began to take an interest in the contents of the parcel; and therefore I made him go away. I grew quite dizzy when I took in hand one treatise after another, and read the titles. It is true, there were many verses among them, but also much that was useful, and I was astonished at the variety of the different subjects. I acknowledge—for I love truth—that I, who have always been engaged in the coffee trade, am not in a position to criticise; but without going so far as criticising, I can pronounce the list of the different titles curious enough. As I have told you the history of the Greek, you know that in my youth I was taught Latin, and though I avoid quotations in my correspondence—which would not be right in a broker’s office—yet I thought, on seeing all these things: “De omnibus aliquid, de toto nihil,” or “Multa non multum.” [35]

Yet I said this more out of anger, and a desire to speak in Latin of all this learning before me, than because I meant it. For if I examined something or other for a time, I was bound to confess that the author appeared to know all about it, and had even a great deal of sound argument in support of his opinions. I found in the parcel treatises and disquisitions—

And this was not all. I found, not to speak of the verses—which were in all languages—many small treatises having no title;—romances in Malay, war-songs in Javanese, and what not. I found also letters, many of them in languages which I did not understand. Some were directed to him, others written by him, or were only copies; but evidently made for some particular purpose; for all were signed by other persons, who testified that they agreed with [37]the original. I saw also extracts from diaries, notes and thoughts at random—some very much so. I had, as I said before, laid aside some treatises, because it appeared to me that they would be useful in my business, and I live for my business;—but I must confess that I was at a loss to know what to do with the rest. I could not return him the parcel; for I did not know where he lived. It was open now. I could not deny that I had looked at the contents—[and I should not have denied it, being so fond of truth],—because I had tried in vain to do it up exactly as it had been before. Moreover, I could not dissemble that some dissertations on Coffee interested me, and that I should like to make some use of them. Every day I read here and there some pages, and became more and more convinced that the author must have been a coffee-broker, to become so completely acquainted with all sort of things in the world. I am quite sure that the Rosemeyers, who trade in sugar, have not acquired such extensive knowledge.

Now I feared that this Shawlman would drop in unexpectedly, and again have something to tell me. I was now very sorry that I went that evening through the Kapelsteeg, and now felt the impropriety of passing through unfashionable streets. Of course, if he had come he would have asked me for some money, and would have spoken of his parcel. I should perhaps have given him something, and if he had sent me the following day the [38]mass of MSS., it would have been my legal property. Then I should have separated the wheat from the chaff; I should have singled out what I wanted for my book, and should have burned, or thrown into the waste-basket, all the rest. This I could not do now; for if he returned, I should have to produce his property, and he, seeing that I was interested in a couple of treatises of his, would very soon have been induced to ask too high a price;—for nothing gives more ascendency to the seller than the discovery that the buyer stands in need of his wares. Such a position is therefore avoided as much as possible by a merchant who understands his business. I have another idea, previously mentioned, which may prove how a person who frequents the Exchange may yet be open to humane impressions;—it was this: Bastianus, that is the third clerk, who is becoming so old and stupid, has not of late been at the office more than twenty-five days out of the thirty; and when he does come, he often does his work very badly. As an honest man, I am obliged to consult the interests of the firm—Last and Co. since the Meyers have retired—to see that every one does his work; for I may not throw away out of mistaken pity, or excess of sensibility, the money of the firm. This is my principle. I would rather give that Bastianus three guilders3 out of my own pocket, than continue to pay him every year seven hundred guilders which he does not deserve. [39]I have calculated that this man has drawn during the thirty-four years of his service—as well from Last and Co., as formerly from Last and Meyer, but the Meyers have left—the sum of nearly fifteen thousand guilders (£1250), and that, for a man in his station, is a large sum; which but few can command. He has no right to complain. I came to this calculation through the treatise of Shawlman on multiplication. That Shawlman writes a good hand, I thought he looked very poor, he did not know what o’clock it was—how would it do, I thought, to give him the situation of Bastianus? I should tell him in that case, that it would be his duty to “SIR” me. That he would know without telling, I hope; for a servant cannot call his superior by name, or he would catch it. He could commence with four or five hundred guilders a year.4 Bastianus had to work many years before he got seven hundred,5 and I shall then have performed a good deed. Yes, with three hundred guilders he could very well commence, for from his inexperience he would, of course, consider the first year as an apprenticeship, which would be quite right; for he cannot be equal to old hands; I am quite sure that he will be content with two hundred guilders.

But I was not easy about his conduct——he had on a shawl; and, moreover, I don’t know where he lives.

A few days afterwards young Mr. Stern and Fred attended [40]a book auction at an hotel, the “Wapen van Bern.” I had forbidden Fred to buy anything; but Stern, who has plenty of money, brought home some rubbish: that’s his business. However, Fred brought news, that he had seen Shawlman, who appeared to be employed at the auction, in taking the books from the shelves, and giving them to the auctioneer. Fred said that he looked very pale, and that a gentleman, who seemed to have the direction there, had growled at him, for letting fall a couple of complete volumes of the “Aglaja;”6 it was, indeed, very clumsy of him to damage such charming ladies’ books. In the course of the scolding, Fred heard that he got fifteen pence a day. “Do you think that I intend to give you fifteen pence a day for nothing?” were the gentleman’s words. I calculated that fifteen pence a day,—Sundays and holidays not included, otherwise he would have spoken of so much a month or so much a year,—make two hundred and twenty-five guilders a year.7 I am quick in my decisions—a man who has been in business for so long a time, knows immediately what to do,—and the following morning I called on Gaafzuiger,8 the bookseller who had held the auction. I asked for the man who had let fall the “Aglaja.” “He had his dismissal,” said Gaafzuiger; “he was idle, conceited, and sickly.” [41]

I bought a box of wafers, and resolved immediately to give Bastianus another trial; I could not make up my mind to turn an old man so unexpectedly upon the streets. To be strict, but, where it is possible, forbearing, has ever been my principle, yet I never lose an opportunity of getting information which may be of use in business, and therefore I asked Gaafzuiger where this Shawlman lived. He gave me the address, and I put it down. I pondered over the book to be brought out; but as I like the truth, I must tell you plainly that I did not know how to manage it. One thing is quite sure: the materials which I found in Shawlman’s parcel were important to coffee-brokers. The only question was, how to arrange the materials in a proper way;—every broker knows how important is the right sorting of the parcels. But to write, except correspondence with “Principals,”9 is rather out of my line, and yet I felt that I must write; because the future of the trade depended on it. The information which I derived from that parcel of Shawlman, is not such as Last and Co. can exclusively profit by; otherwise any one will understand that I should not take the trouble to have a book printed for Busselinck and Waterman’s advantage; because whoever helps a rival in business is a fool;—this is a fixed principle with me. No, I saw that danger menaced the whole coffee-market—a danger that could only be averted by the united forces [42]of all the brokers; but even these might be insufficient, and the sugar-refiners and indigo-merchants might have to help.

And thinking it over while I write, it seems to me that shipowners too are in some measure interested in it, and the commercial marine——

Certainly, that is true; sail-makers also, and ministers of finance; overseers of the poor, and other ministers; pastry-cooks, and shopkeepers; women, and shipbuilders; wholesale merchants, and retail dealers, and gardeners.—

It is curious how thoughts run on when writing,—my book concerns also millers, clergymen, vendors of Holloway’s pills; liquor-distillers, tile-makers, and those who live on the national debt; pumpmakers, and rope-makers; weavers, and butchers; brokers’ clerks, and shareholders in the Dutch Trading Company; in fact, on consideration, all other persons——the King too—yes, the King more than any! My book must go throughout the world. There is no help for it——I do not care if Busselinck and Waterman read it——I am not envious; but they are old women and sneaks, that’s my opinion. I said the same this morning to young Mr. Stern, when I introduced him at “Artis:”10 he may write home about it.

So it was, that a few days ago, I didn’t know what to do with my book, but Fred showed me a way out of the dilemma. I did not tell him so, because I do not think [43]it right to show anybody that I am under an obligation to him; that is a principle of mine, and a true one. He said, that Stern was such a clever fellow, that he made rapid progress in the Dutch language, and that he had translated Shawlman’s German verses into Dutch. You see, the Dutchman had written in German, and the German translated into Dutch; if each had stuck to his own language, much trouble would have been spared. But, I thought, if I have my book written by this Stern——when I have anything to add, I can write a chapter from time to time. Fred may also help—[he has a dictionary of difficulties]. Mary may write the fair copy, and this is a guarantee against all immorality; for, you understand, that a respectable broker will not give anything into the hands of his daughter that is contrary to Morals and Respectability.

I spoke to the young people about my plan, and they liked it. Only Stern, who, like Germans in general, has a smattering of literature, wanted to have a share in handling the subject. This I did not approve; but because there would soon be a Spring Auction, and no order had yet come from Ludwig Stern, I did not like to oppose his wishes. So we agreed to the following conditions:—

1. That he should contribute to the work every week two chapters.

2. That I should make no alterations in his contributions. [44]

3. That Fred should correct the grammatical errors.

4. That I should be at liberty to write from time to time a chapter, to give the book a respectable appearance.

5. That the title should be: “The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company.”

6. That Mary should make the fair copy for the press; but that we should have patience with her on washing-day.

7. That a complete chapter should be read every week at our party.

8. That all immorality should be avoided.

9. That my name should not appear on the title-page, because I am a broker.

10. That Stern should be at liberty to publish German, French, and English translations of my book, because, as he asserted, such works are better understood in foreign countries than at home.

11. That I should send Shawlman paper, pens, and ink.—[Stern insisted very much on this.]

I agreed to everything, for I wanted to finish the book. Stern was ready the following morning with his first chapter,—and here, reader, the question is answered, how it was that a coffee-broker—[Last and Co., No. 37 Laurier Canal]—wrote a book, something like a novel.

Scarcely, however, had Stern commenced the work when difficulties arrested him. In addition to the difficulty of selecting and arranging the materials, he met with, every [45]moment, in the manuscripts words and expressions which he did not understand, and which puzzled even me. These were often Javanese or Malay; and abbreviations also occurred here and there, which we could not decipher. I perceived that we wanted Shawlman; and as I did not think it proper for a young man to fall into bad company, I would not send Stern or Fred to fetch him. I took some sweetmeats with me, which remained after the last party (for I always think about everything), and I went in search of him. His abode was certainly not brilliant; but equality for all men, and of their houses too, is a chimera. He said so himself in his treatise about “Pretensions to Happiness.” Moreover, I do not like persons who are always discontented. It was in a back room in the Lange-Leidsche Dwarsstraat. On the basement lived a marine store-keeper, who sold all sorts of things, as cups, saucers, furniture, old books, glasses, portraits of Van Speyk, and so on. I was very anxious not to break anything, for such people always ask more money for the things than they are worth. A little girl was sitting on the steps before the house, and dressing her doll. I inquired if Mr. Shawlman lived there; she ran away; and her mother made her appearance.

“Yes, sir, he lives here. Your honour has only to go upstairs, to the first landing, then to the second, on to the third, and your honour is there. Minnie, go and say that there is a gentleman come. Who can she say, sir?” I [46]said that I was Mr. Drystubble, coffee-broker, at No. 37 Laurier Canal, but that I should introduce myself. I mounted as high as they told me, and heard on the third landing the voice of a child singing, “Papa will come soon,—sweet papa.” I knocked, and the door was opened by a woman or lady,—I did not know what to think of her. She looked very pale, and her features wore signs of fatigue. She made me think of my wife when washing-day is over. She was dressed in a long white gown or robe without waist-band, which descended to her knees, and was fastened in front with a black pin. Instead of a respectable skirt, she wore underneath a piece of dark linen covered with flowers,—which seemed to be wrapt round her body, hips, and knees very tightly. There was no trace of the folds, width, or amplitude becoming a woman. I was glad that I did not send Fred; for her dress seemed to be extremely immodest, and the strangeness of it was still heightened by the gracefulness of her movements, as if she thought herself quite right in this way, and seemed quite unconscious that she did not look like other women. I also perceived, that she was not at all perplexed at my arrival: she did not hide anything underneath the table, did not move the chairs,—in a word, she did not do as is generally done, when a stranger of respectable appearance arrives.

She had combed her hair back like a Chinese, and bound it behind her head in a sort of knot. Afterwards I heard [47]that her dress is a sort of Indian costume, which they call there Sarong and Kabaai, but I thought it very ugly.

“Are you Shawlman’s wife?” I asked.

“To whom have I the honour to speak?” she said, and that in a tone which seemed to me as if she meant that I might have said honour too.

Now, I dislike compliments. With a “Principal” it is a different thing, and I have been too long a man of business not to know my position, but to give myself much trouble on a third storey, I did not think necessary. So I said briefly that I was Mr. Drystubble, coffee-broker, at No. 37 Laurier Canal, and that I wanted to speak to her husband.

She pointed me to a little chair, and took a little girl on her lap, that was playing on the ground. The little boy whom I had overheard singing looked steadily at me, having viewed me from head to foot. He also, though only six years old, appeared to be not at all perplexed. He was dressed in a very strange way, his wide trousers scarcely reached half-way down the thigh, and his legs were naked to the ankles.—Very indecent, I think. “Do you come to speak to papa?” he asked all of a sudden; and I saw at once that he had been badly brought up, otherwise he would have said “Sir.” But as I was a little out of countenance, and wanted to speak, I replied—

“Yes, my boy, I am here to speak to your papa; do you think he will be in soon?” [48]

“I don’t know. He went out to look for money to buy me a box of colours.”

“Be quiet, my boy,” said the woman. “Do play with your pictures or with the puppet-show.”

“You know, mamma, that that gentleman took away everything yesterday.”

It appeared that “a gentleman had been there and taken away everything——” a delightful visit! The woman appeared to be in trouble, for secretly she wiped away her tears, whilst she brought the little girl to her brother.

“There,” said she, “play a little with Nonnie.”—A strange name. And so he did.

“Well, my good woman,” I asked; “do you expect your husband presently?”

“I do not know,”——she replied.

Then the little boy who had been playing with his sister, left her and asked me:

“Sir, why do you call mamma ‘my good woman?’ ”

“What then, my boy?” I said, “how must I address her?”

“Well—as others do.——You should say ‘my good woman’ to the woman below, who sells saucers.”

Now I am a coffee-broker—Last and Co., No. 37 Laurier Canal: we are thirteen of us at the office, and, including Stern, who receives no salary, there are fourteen. Well, my wife is not Madam, and ought I to call this creature Madam? That is impossible; every one must remain in [49]his own station——besides, the bailiffs took away everything. I thought “my good woman” quite right, and made no alteration.

I asked why Shawlman had not called on me to ask for his parcel? She seemed to know it, and said that they had been to Brussels, where he had worked for the “Indépendance,” but that he could not remain there, because his articles caused the Journal to be so often refused at the French frontiers; that a few days ago they had returned to Amsterdam, where Shawlman expected a situation.

“That was certainly at Gaafzuiger’s?” I asked.

“Yes, it was; but that would not do,” she said.

I knew more about it than she. He had let the Aglaja fall, and was moreover idle, conceited, and poorly——therefore they had turned him out——“And,” she went on, “that he would certainly come to me one of these days, and was, perhaps, just now going to my house to ask for a reply to his request.”

I said that Shawlman might come, but that he was not to knock, that being so troublesome for the servant; if he waited for some time, I said, the door would certainly be opened, when somebody went out. And then I went away, and took my sweetmeats along with me; for, to speak the truth, I did not like the place. I did not feel comfortable there. A broker is certainly not a common porter, and I maintain that I am a very respectable man; I had on my coat with furs, and still she sat as much at [50]her ease, and spoke as calmly with her children, as if she were alone. Moreover, she seemed to have been crying, and I cannot bear discontented persons: it was cold and unsociable there, because everything had been taken away, and I like sociability. While going home I resolved to give Bastianus another trial, not liking to give anybody his dismissal.

Now it is Stern’s first week. Of course much is in it which I do not like; but I must obey stipulation No. 2, and the Rosemeyers are of that opinion; but I think that they flatter Stern, because he has an uncle at Hamburg in the sugar trade.

Shawlman had indeed been at my house; he had spoken to Stern, and given him some information about words and matters which Stern did not understand. I beg the readers to peruse the following chapters; then I promise afterwards something more substantial, composed by myself, Batavus Drystubble, coffee-broker (firm of Last and Co., No. 37 Laurier Canal). [51]

About ten o’clock in the morning there was an unusual bustle on the principal highway which leads from the district Pandaglang to Lebak. “Principal highway” is, perhaps, too good a name for a wide footpath, which people called out of politeness, and from want of a better term, “the way;” but if you started with a carriage and four from Serang, the capital of Bantam,1 with the intention of going to Rankas-Betong, the new capital of the Lebak district, you would be sure to reach your destination some time or other. So it was a road. It is true you often stuck in the mud, which in the Bantam lowlands is so heavy, clayey, and sticky, that travellers are often obliged to ask the assistance of the inhabitants of the villages in the neighbourhood—even of those who are not in the neighbourhood, for villages are not numerous in these regions;—but if you did succeed at last in getting the assistance of a score of husbandmen, it did not take long [52]to get horses and carriage again on firm ground. The coachman smacked his whip, the running boys—in Europe you would call them, I think, “palfreniers,”—but no, you have nothing in Europe which can give you an idea of these running boys.—These incomparable running boys, with their short thin switches, tearing alongside of the four horses, making indescribable noises, and beating the horses under the belly to encourage them, till—the vexatious moment arrived when the carriage once more sank in the mud. Then the cry for help was renewed; you waited till assistance was proffered, and then slowly resumed the journey. Often when I passed that way, I expected to meet a carriage with travellers of the last century, who had stuck in the mud, and been forgotten. But this never happened to me. Therefore I suppose, that every one who went that way, arrived at last at his destination. You would be mistaken, if you thought that all the roads in Java were in the same bad state. The military road with many branches, which Marshal Daendels2 constructed with great sacrifice of men, is indeed a masterpiece, and you are struck with wonder at the energy of the man, who, notwithstanding many obstacles, [53]raised up by envious opponents at home, dared the displeasure of the population, the discontent of the chiefs, and succeeded in performing a task, that even now excites and merits the admiration of every visitor.

No post-horses in Europe, not even in England, Russia, or Hungary can be compared with those of Java. Over high mountain ridges, along the brow of precipices that make you shudder, the heavy-laden travelling carriage flies on at full speed. The coachman sits on the box as if nailed to it, hours, yes, whole days successively, and swings the heavy lash with an iron hand. He can calculate exactly where and how much he must restrain the galloping horses, in order that, after descending at full speed from a mountain declivity, he may on reaching that corner * * *

“O God” (cries the inexperienced traveller),——“we are going down a precipice, there’s no road,——there’s an abyss!” * *

Yes, so it seems. The road bends, and just at the time when one more bound of the galloping animals would throw the leaders off the path, the horses turn, and sling the carriage round the corner. At full gallop they run [54]up the mountain height, which a moment before was unseen——and the precipice is behind you. Sometimes the carriage is only supported at the bend by the wheels on the inside of the curve: centrifugal force has raised the outside ones off the ground. It needs a great deal of coolness, not to shut one’s eyes, and whoever travels for the first time in Java, generally writes to his family in Europe, that he has been in danger of his life; but he whose home is in Java laughs at that.

Reader, it is not my intention, particularly at the commencement of this history, to waste time in describing places, scenery, or buildings.—I am too much afraid of disheartening you, by what would resemble prolixity; and therefore, until I feel that I have won your attention, till I observe in your glances and in your countenance that the destiny of the heroine, who jumps somewhere from a fourth storey, interests you, I shall not make her hover in the air, with a bold contempt for all the laws of gravitation, so long as is necessary for the accurate description of the beauty of the landscape, or the building, that seems to be put in somewhere to give occasion for a voluminous essay on mediæval architecture. All those castles resemble each other. They are invariably of heterogeneous architecture; the main building always dates from some earlier reign than the wings which are added to it afterwards under the reign of such and such a king. The towers are in a dilapidated state. * * * Reader, there are no [55]towers. A tower is an idea, a dream. There are “half towers,” and turrets. The fanaticism which wanted to put towers to the edifices that were erected in honour of this or that saint, did not last long enough to finish them; and the spire, designed to point out heaven to believers, is generally supported by two or three low battlements on the huge base, which makes you think of the man without thighs at the fair. The towers of village churches only, with their spires, are finished.

It is not very flattering to Western civilisation, that the enthusiasm for an extensive work has very seldom prevailed long enough to see that work finished. I do not now speak of undertakings whose completion was necessary to defray the expenses: whoever wants to know exactly what I mean, must go and see the Cathedral at Cologne. Let him think of the grand conception of that building in the soul of the architect;—of the faith in the hearts of the people, which furnished him with the means to commence and continue that labour;—of the influence of the ideas, which required such a colossus to serve as a visible representation of unseen religious feeling—and let him compare that enthusiasm with the train of ideas, that some centuries afterwards stopped the labour.

There is a profound chasm between Erwin von Steinbach and our architects! I know, that for many years they have been occupied in filling up that chasm; at Cologne too they are again working at the Cathedral. [56]But will they be able to join the broken wire; will they be able to find again in our days, what constituted the power of prelate and builder?—I do not think so. Money may be contributed, stone and lime may be bought, a draughtsman may be paid to draw a plan, and a mason to fix the stones——but the lost and still venerable faith, that saw in an edifice a poem—a poem of granite, that spoke very loudly to the people—a poem in marble, that stood there as an immovable continual eternal prayer, cannot be purchased with money. * * * *

There was one morning an unusual bustle on the frontiers between Lebak and Pandaglang. Hundreds of saddled horses were on the way, and a thousand men at least, a large number for that place, ran to and fro in active expectancy. There were the chiefs of the villages, and the district chiefs of Lebak, all with their followers; and judging from the beautiful Arab steed, that stood there in his rich caparison, a chief of great importance must be there also. Such was the case. The Regent of Lebak, Radeen Adhipatti, Karta Natta Negara,3 had left Rankas-Betong with a numerous retinue, and notwithstanding his great age had travelled the twelve or thirteen miles that separated his residence from Pandaglang. A new Assistant Resident was coming; and custom, which has [57]the force of law in the Indies more than anywhere else, will have it that the officer who is intrusted with the rule of a district must be festively received on his arrival. The Controller, too, was present. He was a man of middle age, and after the death of the last Assistant Resident, being the next in rank, had carried on the government for some months.

As soon as the arrival of the new Assistant Resident was known, a pendoppo was erected in great haste; a table and some chairs brought there with some refreshments, and in that ‘pendoppo’ the Regent, with the Controller, awaited the arrival of the new chief. After a broad-brimmed hat, an umbrella, or a hollow tree, a ‘pendoppo’ is certainly the most simple representation of the idea “roof.”

Picture to yourself four or six bamboo canes, driven into the ground, tied together at the top with other bamboos, on which is placed a cover of the large leaves of the water-palm, called in these regions atap, and you will have an idea of such a ‘pendoppo.’ It is, as you see, as simple as possible, and here it had only to serve as a pied-à-terre, for the European and native officials who were there to welcome their new chief.

It was not very correct of me to call the Assistant Resident the “chief” of the Regent. I must explain the machinery of government in these regions. The so-called “Dutch India”—[I think the expression inaccurate, but it is the official term]—as far as regards the relation of its [58]population to the mother country, must be divided into two very distinct great divisions.

One of these consists of tribes whose kings and princes have been content to be tributary to Holland, but have nevertheless retained the direct government, in a greater or less degree, in their own hands. The other division, to which the whole of Java belongs, with a very trifling, perhaps only apparent exception, is totally and directly subject to Holland. There is here no question about tribute, tax, or alliance. The Javanese is a Dutch subject. The King of Holland is his king. The descendants of his former princes and lords are Dutch functionaries: they are appointed, transferred, promoted, dismissed, by the Governor-General, who reigns in name of the King. Criminals are condemned and punished by a law made at the Hague. The taxes paid by the Javanese flow into the Exchequer of Holland.

This book will treat chiefly of these Dutch possessions, which form an integral part of the kingdom of Holland. The Governor-General is assisted by a Senate, but this Senate has no power to modify his resolutions. At Batavia, the different branches of the Government are divided into departments, with Directors at their head, who form the link between the supreme direction of the Governor-General and the Residents in the provinces. Yet in matters of a political nature these Residents apply directly to the Governor-General. [59]

The title of “Resident” dates its origin from the time when Holland acted the part of a protecting State rather than that of a feudal superior, and was represented at the Courts of the several reigning princes by resident functionaries. The Princes are gone; the Residents have become rulers of provinces; they have acquired the power of prefects. Their position is changed, but the name remains.

It is properly those Residents who represent the Dutch authority in the eyes of the Javanese population, who know neither the Governor-General, nor the Senators of the Indies, nor the Directors at Batavia; they know only the Resident and the functionaries who reign subordinate to him.

A Residency, so called—some of them have a population of one million souls,—is divided into three, four, or five departments or regencies, at the head of each of which is an Assistant Resident. Under these the government is carried on by controllers, overseers, and a number of other officers, who are required for the gathering of the taxes, the superintendence of agriculture, the erection of buildings, for the waterworks, the police, and the administration of justice.

In every department the Assistant Resident is aided by a native chief of high rank, with the title of Regent. Such a Regent, though his relation to the Government and his department is quite that of a paid official, always belongs [60]to the high aristocracy of his country, and often to the family of the princes, who have governed in that part or neighbourhood as independent sovereigns. It is very politic in Holland to make use of the ancient feudal influence of the princes, which in Asia is generally very great, and is looked upon by most of the tribes as a part of their religion, because, by making those chiefs paid officers of the Crown, a sort of hierarchy is created, at the head of which is the Dutch Government, in the person of the Governor-General.

There is nothing new under the sun. Were not the Margraves, the Burgraves, of the German Empire, appointed in the same manner by the Emperor, and generally elected from among the Barons? Without expatiating on the origin of the nobility, which is sufficiently evident, I wish here to insert the observation, that throughout the Indies the same causes have had the same effects as in Europe. If a country must be ruled at a great distance, you will need functionaries to represent the central power. Thus the Romans under their system of military despotism chose prefects from among the generals of the legions who had subjugated a country. Such districts thenceforth remained “provinces,” and were ruled as conquests! But when afterwards the central power of the German Empire endeavoured to hold the people in subjection by other means than by material force, as soon as a distant region was considered to belong to the Empire from similarity of [61]origin, language, and customs, it became necessary to charge with the management of affairs a person who not only was at home in that country, but was elevated by his rank above his fellow-citizens, in order that obedience to the commands of the Emperor might be rendered more easy by the military submission of the people to him who was intrusted with the execution of those commands; and in this manner the cost of a standing army was altogether or in part avoided at the expense of the public treasury, or, as it generally happened, of the provinces themselves, who had to be watched by an army. So the first Counts were chosen out of the Barons of the country, and if you take the word literally, then “Count” is no noble title, but only the denomination of a person invested with a certain office. I, therefore, also think, that in the middle ages the opinion prevailed, that the German Emperor had the right to appoint “Counts” (governors of districts), and “Dukes” (commanders of armies), but that the Barons asserted that they were, as regards their birth, equal to the Emperor, and were only dependent upon God, except as regarded their obligation to serve the Emperor, provided he was elected with their approbation and from among their number. A Count was invested with an office to which the Emperor had called him; a Baron considered himself a Baron “by the grace of God.” The Counts represented the Emperor, and as such carried his banners; a Baron raised men under his colours as a knight. The [62]circumstance that Counts and Dukes were generally elected from among the Barons, caused them to add the importance of their employment to the influence which they derived from their birth; and it seems that afterwards, especially when people got accustomed to the hereditary nature of those employments, the precedence arose which these titles had over that of Baron. Even now-a-days, many a noble family, without imperial or royal patent, that is to say, such a family as derives its nobility from the origin of the country itself, a family which always was noble, because it was noble—autochthonous—would refuse an elevation to the title of Count. There are instances of this.

The persons intrusted with the government of such a county naturally tried to obtain from the Emperor, that their sons, or, in default of sons, other relations, should succeed them in their employment. This also happened very often, though I do not believe that the right to that succession was ever proved, at least in the case of those functionaries in the Netherlands, the Counts of Holland, Zealand, Flanders, Hainault,—the Dukes of Brabant, Gelderland, etc. At first it was a favour, soon it became a custom, at last a necessity; but never did that succession become a law.

Almost in the same way, as to the choice of persons,—because there can be no question of similarity of position,—a native functionary is placed at the head of a district [63]of Java, who adds to the rank given him by the Government his autochthonous influence, to facilitate the rule of the European functionary representing the Dutch Government. Here, too, hereditary succession, without being established by law, has become a custom. During the life of the Regent this is often arranged; and it is regarded as a reward for zeal and trust, if they give him the promise that he shall be succeeded by his son. There must be very important reasons to cause a departure from that rule, and where this is necessary, a successor is generally elected out of the members of the same family. The relation between European officials and such high-placed Javanese nobles is very delicate. The Assistant Resident of a district is the responsible person; he has his instructions, and is considered to be the chief of the district. Still the Regent is much his superior—through local knowledge, birth, influence on the population, pecuniary revenues, and manner of living. Moreover, a Regent, as representing the Javanese element, and being considered the mouthpiece of the hundred thousand or more inhabitants of his regency, is also in the eyes of the Government a much more important personage than the simple European officer, whose discontent need not be feared, because they can get many others in his place, whilst the displeasure of a Regent would become perhaps the germ of disturbance or revolt.

From all this arises the strange reality that the inferior actually commands the superior. The Assistant Resident [64]orders the Regent to make statements to him; he orders him to send labourers to work at the bridges and roads; he orders him to gather the taxes; he summons him to the Council, of which he, the Assistant Resident, is President; he blames him where he is guilty of neglect of duty. This peculiar relation is made possible only by very polite forms, which need not exclude either cordiality, or where it is necessary, severity; and I believe that the demeanour to be maintained in this relation is very well described in the official instructions on the subject, as follows, “The European functionary has to treat the native functionary, who aids him, as his younger brother.” But he must not forget that this younger brother is very much loved, or feared, by his parents, and in the event of any dispute, his own seniority would immediately be accounted as a motive for taking it amiss that he did not treat his younger brother with more indulgence.

The innate courteousness of the Javanese grandee,—even the common Javanese are much politer than Europeans in the same condition,—makes this apparently difficult relation more tolerable than it otherwise would be.

Let the European have a good education, with some refinement, let him behave himself with a friendly dignity, and he may be assured that the Regent on his part will do all in his power to facilitate his rule. The distasteful command put in an inviting form is punctually performed. The difference in position, birth, wealth, is effaced by the [65]Regent himself, who raises the European, as Representative of the King of the Netherlands, to his own position; and the result of a relation which, viewed superciliously, would have brought about collision, is very often the source of an agreeable intercourse.

I said that such Regents had precedence over the European functionaries on account of their wealth; and this is a matter of course. The European, when he is summoned to govern a province which in surface is equal to many German duchies, is generally a person of middle or more advanced age, married and a father: he fills an office to gain his livelihood. His pay is only sufficient, and often insufficient, to procure what is necessary for his family. The Regent is “Tommongong,” “Adhipatti,”4 yes, even “Pangerang,” that is, a “Javanese prince.” The question for him is not that of getting his living; he must live according to his rank.

While the European lives in a house, his residence is often a Kratoon,5 with many houses and villages therein. Where the European has a wife with three or four children, he supports a great number of women with their attendants. While the European rides out, followed by a few officers—as many as are necessary to draw up reports on his journey of inspection,—the Regent is followed by hundreds of retainers that belong to his suite, and in the eyes of the people these are inseparable from his high rank. [66]The European lives citizen-like; the Regent lives—or is supposed to live—as a Prince.

But all this must be paid for. The Dutch Government which has founded itself on the influence of these Regents, knows this; and therefore nothing is more natural than that it has raised their incomes to a standard that must appear exaggerated to one unacquainted with Indian affairs, but which is in truth very seldom sufficient to meet the expenses that are necessarily incurred by the mode of life of such a native chief.

It is no uncommon thing to find Regents in pecuniary difficulties who have an income of two or three hundred thousand guilders.6 This is brought about by the princely indifference with which they lavish their money, and neglect to watch their inferiors, by their fondness for buying, and, above all things, the abuse often made of these qualities by Europeans. The revenue of the Javanese grandees may be divided into four parts. In the first place, their fixed monthly pay; secondly, a fixed sum as indemnification for their bought-up rights, which have passed to the Dutch Government; thirdly, a premium on the productions of their regency,—as coffee, sugar, indigo, cinnamon, etc.; and lastly, the arbitrary disposal of the labour and property of their subjects. The two last-mentioned sources of revenue need some explanation. The Javanese is by nature a husbandman; the ground whereon [67]he is born, which gives much for little labour, allures him to it, and, above all things, he devotes his whole heart and soul to the cultivating of his rice-fields, in which he is very clever. He grows up in the midst of his sawahs, and gagahs, and tipars;7 when still very young, he accompanies his father to the field, where he helps him in his labour with plough and spade, in constructing dams and drains to irrigate his fields; he counts his years by harvests; he estimates time by the colour of the blades in his field; he is at home amongst the companions who cut paddy with him; he chooses his wife amongst the girls of the dessah,8 who every evening tread the rice with joyous songs. The possession of a few buffaloes for ploughing is the ideal of his dreams. The cultivation of rice is in Java what the vintage is in the Rhine provinces and in the south of France. But there came foreigners from the West, who made themselves masters of the country. They wished to profit by the fertility of the soil, and ordered the native to devote a part of his time and labour to the cultivation of other things which should produce higher profits in the markets of Europe. To persuade the lower orders to do so, they only had to follow a very simple policy. The Javanese obeys his chiefs; to win the chiefs, it was only necessary to give them a part of the gain,—and success was complete. [68]

To be convinced of the success of that policy we need only consider the immense quantity of Javanese products sold in Holland; and we shall also be convinced of its injustice, for, if anybody should ask if the husbandman himself gets a reward in proportion to that quantity, then I must give a negative answer. The Government compels him to cultivate certain products on his ground; it punishes him if he sells what he has produced to any purchaser but itself; and it fixes the price actually paid. The expenses of transport to Europe through a privileged trading company are high; the money paid to the chiefs for encouragement increases the prime cost; and because the entire trade must produce profit, that profit cannot be got in any other way than by paying the Javanese just enough to keep him from starving, which would lessen the producing power of the nation.

To the European officials, also, a premium is paid in proportion to the produce. It is a fact that the poor Javanese is thus driven by a double force; that he is driven away from his rice-fields; it is a fact that famine is often the consequence of these measures; but the flags of the ships, laden with the harvest that makes Holland rich, are flapping gaily at Batavia, at Samarang, at Soorabaya, at Passarooan, at Bezookie, at Probolingo, at Patjitan, at Tjilatjap.

“Famine——? In Java, the rich and fertile, famine?”—Yes, reader, a few years ago whole districts were depopulated [69]by famine; mothers offered to sell their children for food, mothers ate their own children.——But then the mother-country interfered. In the halls of the Dutch Parliament complaints were made, and the then reigning Governor had to give orders that the extension of the so-called European market should no longer be pushed to the extremity of famine.

“Oh! this angelic Parliament!——”

This I write with bitterness—what would you think of a person that could describe such things without bitterness?

I have yet to speak of the last and principal source of the revenues of the native chiefs, viz., their arbitrary disposal of the persons and property of their subjects. According to the general idea in nearly the whole of Asia, the subject, with all that he possesses, belongs to the prince. The descendants or relatives of the former princes like to profit by the ignorance of the people, who do not yet quite understand that their “Tommongong,” “Adhipatti,” or “Pangerang” is now a paid official, who has sold his own rights and theirs for a fixed income, and that thus the ill-requited labour of the coffee plantation or sugar field has taken the place of the taxes which they formerly paid their lords. Hence nothing is more common than that hundreds of families are summoned from far remote places to work, without payment, on fields that belong to the Regent. Nothing is more common than the furnishing [70]of unpaid-for provisions for the use of the Court of the Regent; and if the Regent happens to cast a longing eye on the horse, the buffalo, the daughter, the wife of the poor man, it would be thought unheard-of if he refused the unconditional surrender of the desired object. There are Regents who make a reasonable use of such arbitrary powers, and who do not exact more of the poor man than is strictly necessary to uphold their rank. Some go a little further, and this injustice is nowhere entirely wanting. And it is very difficult, nay even impossible, entirely to destroy such an abuse, because it is in the nature of the population itself to induce or create it. The Javanese is cordial, above all things where he has to give a proof of attachment to his chief, to the descendant of those whom his forefathers obeyed. He would even think himself wanting in the respect due to his hereditary lord, if he entered his Kratoon without presents. These gifts are often of such small value, that to refuse them would be a humiliation, and the usage is rather more like the homage of a child who tries to give utterance to filial love by offering his father a little present, than a tribute to tyrannical despotism.

But the existence of such a good custom makes the abolition of a bad one very difficult.

If the aloon-aloon9 in front of the residence of the [71]Regent were in an uncultivated condition, the neighbouring population would be ashamed of it, and much force would be required to prevent them from clearing that square of weeds, and putting it in a condition suitable to the rank of the Regent. To give any payment for this would be considered as an insult to all. But near this ‘aloon-aloon,’ or elsewhere, there are ‘sawahs’ that wait for the plough, or a channel to bring water, often from a distance of many miles. Those ‘sawahs’ belong to the Regent. He summons the population of whole villages, whose ‘sawahs’ need labour as well as his.——There you have the abuse.

This is known to the Government; and whosoever reads the official papers, containing the laws, instructions, regulations, etc., for the functionaries, applauds the humanity and justice which seem to have influenced those who made them. Wherever the European is intrusted with power in the interior of Java, he is clearly told that one of his first obligations is to prevent the self-abasement of the people, and to protect them from the covetousness of the chiefs; and, as if it were not enough to make this obligation generally known, a special oath is exacted from the Assistant Residents that when they enter upon the government of a province, they will regard this fatherly care for the population as their first duty.

That is a noble vocation. To maintain justice, to protect the poor against the powerful, to defend the weak [72]against the superior power of the strong, to recover the ewe-lamb from the folds of the kingly robber:—well, all this makes your heart glow with pleasure at the idea that it is your lot to have so noble a vocation;—and let any one in the interior of Java, who may be sometimes discontented with his situation or pay, consider the sublime duty which devolves upon him, and the glorious delight which the fulfilment of such a duty gives, and he will not be desirous of any other reward. But that duty is by no means easy. In the first place, one has exactly to consider where the use ends, to make room for abuse;—and where the abuse exists, where robbery has indeed been committed by the exercise of arbitrary power, the victims themselves are, for the most part, accomplices, either from extreme submission, or from fear, or from distrust of the will or the power of the man whose duty it is to protect them. Every one knows, that the European officer can be summoned every moment to another employment, and that the Regent, the powerful Regent, remains there. Moreover, there are so many ways of appropriating the property of a poor ignorant man. If a mantrie10 says to him that the Regent wants his horse, the consequence is, that the wished-for animal is soon found in the Regent’s stables; but this does not mean that the Regent does not intend to pay handsomely for it some time or other. If hundreds [73]of people labour on the fields of a chief, without getting money for it, this is no proof that he makes them do so for his benefit. Might it not have been his intention to give them the harvest, having made the philanthropic calculation that his fields were more fertile than theirs, and would much better reward their labour?

Besides, where could the European officer get witnesses having the courage to give evidence against their lord the Regent? And, if he ventured to make an accusation without being able to prove it, where would be the relation of elder brother, who, in such a case, would have impeached his younger brother’s honour? Where would he then find the favour of the Government, which gives him bread for service, but which would take that bread from him, which would discharge him as incapable, if he rashly accused so high a personage as an “Adhipatti” or “Pangerang?”

No, no, that duty is by no means easy! This can be proved by the fact—apparent to every one—that each native chief pushes too far the limit of the lawful disposal of labour and property; that all Assistant Residents take an oath to resist this, and yet that very seldom a Regent is accused for abuse of power or arbitrary conduct.

It seems also that there must be an insurmountable difficulty in keeping the oath: “TO PROTECT THE NATIVE POPULATION AGAINST EXTORTION AND TYRANNY.” [74]

The Controller Verbrugge was a good man. When you saw him sitting there in his blue cloth dress-coat, embroidered with oak and orange branches on collar and cuffs, you could not have found a better type of the Dutchman in India, who, by the way, is quite different from the Dutchman in Holland. Slow as long as there was nothing to be done; far from that fussiness, which in Europe is mistaken for zeal, but zealous where business required attention; plain, but cordial to those around him; communicative, willing to help, and hospitable; very polite without stiffness; susceptible of good impressions; honest and sincere, without wishing to be a martyr to these qualities;—in short, he was a man, who, as they say, could make himself at home anywhere, yet without making any one think of calling the century by his name—an honour which, in truth, he did not desire.

He was sitting in the middle of the ‘pendoppo,’ near [75]the table, which was covered with a white cloth, and well furnished with viands. Rather impatiently from time to time, in the words of Mrs. Bluebeard’s sister, he asked the mandoor—[that is, the chief of police, and officials under the Assistant Resident]—if there was nothing to be seen. Then he got up, tried in vain to make his spurs clatter on the hard clay floor of the ‘pendoppo,’ lighted his cigar, and sat down again. He spoke little; but could have spoken more, for he was not alone.——I do not refer to the twenty or thirty Javanese servants, ‘mantries,’ and overseers, who sat squatting on the ground in the ‘pendoppo,’ nor to the numbers who incessantly ran in and out, nor to those of different rank, that held the horses outside, or rode on horseback;—the Regent of Lebak himself, Radeen Adhipatti Karta Natta Negara, sat facing him. To wait is always tiresome: a quarter of an hour seems an hour; an hour half a day, and so on. Verbrugge might have been more talkative. The Regent of Lebak was an intelligent old man, who could speak on many subjects with sense and judgment: one had only to look at him to be convinced that most of the Europeans who came in contact with him had more to learn from him than he from them. His clear dark eyes contradicted by their fire the weariness of his features and his grey hairs. What he said was generally well considered, which is indeed generally the case with cultivated Orientals; and you perceived, if you were in a conversation with him, that [76]you had to consider his words as letters, of which he had the copy in his archives, in order to recall them if necessary. This may appear disagreeable to those who are not accustomed to converse with Javanese grandees, yet it is very easy to avoid in conversation all topics that might become a stumbling-block, for they will never abruptly give another direction to the course of the conversation; because, according to Eastern ideas, this would be contrary to politeness. Thus every one who has reason to avoid speaking on a certain subject has only to speak about insignificant matters, and he may rest assured that a Javanese chief will not, by giving the conversation an unwished-for turn, bring him upon ground which he does not like to tread upon.

On the mode of dealing with these chiefs there are also different opinions. I think that sincerity alone, without any attempt at diplomatic prudence, deserves preference. Be that as it may, Verbrugge began with an observation on the weather and the rain.

“Yes, Mr. Controller, it is the rainy season.”

Now Verbrugge knew this very well: it was January; but the Regent knew, too, what he had said about the rain. Then again there was silence. The Regent beckoned with a scarcely visible motion of the head to one of the servants that sat squatting at the entrance of the ‘pendoppo.’ A little boy, splendidly dressed in a blue velvet jacket and white trousers, with a golden girdle confining [77]his magnificent Sarong1 round his waist, and on his head the pretty Kain Kapala,2 under which his black eyes peeped forth so roguishly, crept squatting to the feet of the Regent, put down the gold box which contained the Sirie,3 the lime, the pinang, the gambier,4 and the tobacco, made his Slamat by raising both his hands put together to his forehead, as he bowed low, and then offered the precious box to his master.

“The road will be very difficult, after so much rain,” said the Regent, as if to explain the long pause, whilst he covered the betel-leaf with lime.

“In the Pandaglang the road is not so bad,” Verbrugge replied; who, unless he wanted to hint at something disagreeable, gave that answer certainly a little inconsiderately; for he ought to have taken into consideration that a Regent of Lebak does not like to hear the Pandaglang roads praised, even if they are much better than those of Lebak.

The Adhipatti did not make the mistake of replying too quickly. The little maas had already crept squatting backwards to the entrance of the ‘pendoppo,’ where he remained with his companions; the Regent had made his [78]lips and few remaining teeth red with the juice of his betel, before he said—

“Yes; Pandaglang is more populous.”

To one acquainted with the Regent and the Controller, to whom the state of Lebak was no secret, it would have been quite clear that the conversation had already become a quarrel. An allusion to the better state of the roads in a neighbouring province appeared to be the consequence of the fruitless endeavours to improve the roads in Lebak. But the Regent was right in saying that Pandaglang was more populous, above all things, in proportion to the much smaller surface, and that, of course, united power rendered labour on the great roads there much easier than in Lebak, a province which counted but seventy thousand inhabitants on a surface of some hundred miles.

“That is true,” said Verbrugge, “our population is not large, but——”

The Adhipatti looked at him, as if he expected an attack. He knew that “but” might be followed by something disagreeable for him to hear, who had been for thirty years Regent of Lebak. Verbrugge wished to end the conversation, and asked the ‘mandoor’ again if he saw nothing coming.

“I do not yet see anything from the Pandaglang side, Mr. Controller; but yonder on the other side there is somebody on horseback——it is the Commandant.”

“To be sure, Dongso!” said Verbrugge, looking outside; [79]“he hunts in this neighbourhood; he went away this morning very early——ho! Duclari—Duclari——”

“He hears you, sir; he is coming this way. His boy rides after him.”

“Hold the Commandant’s horse,” said Mr. Verbrugge to one of the servants. “Good-morning, Duclari, are you wet?——what have you killed? Come in.”

A strong man about thirty years of age and of military appearance, though there was no trace of a uniform to be seen, entered the ‘pendoppo.’ It was Lieutenant Duclari, commandant of the small garrison of Rankas-Betong. Verbrugge and he were familiar friends, as Duclari had lived for some time in Verbrugge’s house, pending the completion of a new fort. He shook hands with him, politely saluted the Regent, and sat down asking: “What have you here?”

“Will you have some tea, Duclari?”

“Certainly not; I am hot enough. Have you no cocoa-nut milk?—that is refreshing.”

“I won’t let you have it. If one is hot, cocoa-milk is, in my opinion, very unwholesome; it makes you stiff and gouty. Look at the coolies who carry heavy burdens over the mountains—they keep themselves active and supple by drinking hot water or Koppi dahoen—but ginger-tea is still better——”

“What?—Koppi dahoen, tea of coffee-leaves? That I have never seen.” [80]

“Because you have not served in Sumatra: there it is common.”

“Let me have tea then—but not of coffee-leaves, or ginger.——So, you have been at Sumatra——and the new Assistant Resident, too, has he not?”

All this was spoken in Dutch, which the Regent did not understand. Either Duclari felt that it was not very polite to exclude him in this way from the conversation, or he had another object in view, because all at once he commenced speaking Malay, addressing the Regent:—

“Does the Adhipatti know that the Controller is acquainted with the new Assistant Resident?”

“No, I did not say so;—I don’t know him,” said Verbrugge, in Malay. “I have never seen him; he served in Sumatra some years before me. I only told you that I had there heard a good deal about him.”

“Now, that is the same thing; it is not necessary to see a person in order to know him——what does the Adhipatti think about it?”

The Adhipatti at that moment wanted to call a servant. Some time elapsed before he could say, “that he agreed with the Commandant, but that still it was often necessary to see a person before you could judge of him.”

“Generally speaking, that is perhaps true,” Duclari continued in Dutch, either because he knew that language better, and thought he had done enough for politeness’ sake, or because he wished to be understood by Verbrugge alone,[81]—“that may be true, generally speaking; but with regard to Havelaar you need no personal acquaintance——he is a fool.”

“I did not say so, Duclari.”

“No, you did not say so, but I say it, after all you have told me of him. I call any one who jumps into the water to save a dog from the sharks a fool.”

“Yes, it was foolish, but——”

“And recollect that——epigram on General Van Damme——that was not proper.”

“It was witty——”

“Yes, but a young man may not be witty at the expense of a General.”

“You must bear in mind that he was then very young—it was fourteen years ago—he was only twenty years old.”

“And then the turkey which he stole?”

“That he did to annoy the General.”

“Exactly so. A young man may not annoy a General, especially one who is, as civil governor, his superior——the epigram I think very funny——but then again that duelling——”

“He did it generally on behalf of another; he always was the champion of the weak.”

“Well, let every one fight for himself, if fighting there must be. As for me, I think that a duel is seldom necessary; if necessary, I should accept it, but——to make a [82]custom of it——I’d rather not. I hope that he is changed in this respect——”

“To be sure, there is no doubt about that. He is now so much older, has long been a married man, and Assistant Resident. Moreover, I have always heard that his heart is good, and that he has a strong sense of justice.”

“Then he is just fit for Lebak——something happened this morning that——Do you think that the Regent understands us?”

“I do not think so; but show me something out of your game-bag; then he will think that we are speaking of that.”

Duclari took his bag, pulled out two wood-cocks, and, handling them, as if speaking about his sport, he communicated to Verbrugge that he had been followed by a Javanese, who had asked him if he could do nothing to lighten the pressure under which the population groaned? “And,” he went on, “that means much, Verbrugge! Not that I wonder at the fact itself; I have been long enough in the Residency of Bantam to know what is going on here; but that a common Javanese, generally so circumspect and reserved in what concerns the chiefs, should make such a request to one who has nothing to do with it, surprises me.”

“And what did you answer, Duclari?”

“Well, that it was not my business; that he must go to you, or to the new Assistant Resident, when he arrives at Rankas-Betong, and there make his complaint.” [83]

“There they come,” said the servant Dongso, all at once. “I see a ‘mantrie’ waving his toodoong.”5

All stood up. Duclari not wishing it to appear that he had come to the frontiers to welcome the Assistant Resident, his superior in rank but not in command, and who was moreover a fool, mounted his horse, and rode off, followed by his servant.

The Adhipatti and Verbrugge, standing at the entrance of the ‘pendoppo,’ saw a travelling carriage approaching, dragged by four horses, which soon stopped, covered with mud, near the little bamboo building.

It would have been very difficult to guess what there could be in that coach, before Dongso, helped by the runners and a legion of servants belonging to the Regent’s suite, had undone all the straps and buttons, that enclosed the vehicle in a black leathern cover, an operation which put you in mind of the precautions with which lions and tigers were formerly brought into cities when the Zoological Gardens were as yet only travelling menageries. Now there were no lions or tigers in the van; they had only shut it up in this way because it was the west monsoon,6 and it was necessary to be prepared for rain.

Now the alighting out of a van, in which one has jolted for a long time along the road, is not so easy, as he would [84]think who has never, or but seldom travelled. Almost as in the case of the poor Saurians of the Antediluvian period, which, by staying too long, at last became an integral part of the clay, which they had not originally entered with the intention of remaining there, so with travellers who have been sitting too long cooped up in a travelling carriage, there happens something that I propose to call assimilation.——At last one hardly knows where the leathern cushion ends, and his individuality begins. Yes, I even think that one might have toothache or cramp in such a position, and mistake it for moth in the cloth, or mistake moth in the cloth for toothache or cramp. * * *

There are but few circumstances in the material world that do not afford to the thinking man the opportunity of making intellectual observations, and so I have often asked myself whether many errors, that have become common with us, many “Wrongs” that we think to be right, owe their origin to the fact, of having been sitting too long with the same company in the same travelling carriage? The leg, that you had to put there on the left, between the hat-box, and the little basket of cherries;—the knee, which you held pressed against the coach-door, not to make the lady opposite you think that you intended an attack on her crinoline or virtue;—the foot, covered with corns, that was so much afraid of the heels of the “commercial traveller” near you;—the neck, which you had to bend so long [85]a time to the left because rain came in on the right side, all these are at last somewhat distorted. I think it well to change from time to time coaches, seats, and fellow-travellers. Then you can give your neck another direction, you can sometimes move your knee, and perhaps you may have a young lady near you with dancing-shoes, or a little boy whose feet do not touch the ground. Then you have a better chance of looking and walking straight, as soon as you get solid earth under your feet.

If anything in the coach that stopped before the ‘pendoppo’ was opposed to the solution of continuity I don’t know; but it is certain that it was some time before anything appeared.

There seemed to be a difficulty of etiquette, judging from the words: “If you please, Madam!” and “Resident!” Be this as it may, a gentleman at length stepped out who had in his attitude and appearance something perhaps which made you think of the Saurians I have spoken of. As we shall meet him again afterwards, I will tell you at once that his immobility was not only due to assimilation with the travelling coach, since, even when there was no van in the neighbourhood, he exhibited a calmness, a slowness, and a prudence, that would make many a Saurian jealous, and that in the eyes of many would be considered as tokens of a sedate, calm, and wise man. He was, like most Europeans in India, very pale, which, however, is not in the least considered in these regions as a sign of [86]delicate health. He had fine features, that certainly bore witness of intellectual development. But there was something cold in his glance, something that made you think of a table of logarithms; and though his aspect on the whole was not unpleasing or repulsive, one could not help thinking that the very large thin nose on that face was annoyed because there was so little stir.

He politely offered his hand to a lady, to help her in getting out, and after he had taken from a gentleman who was still in the coach, a child, a little fair boy of about three years old, they entered the ‘pendoppo.’ Then that gentleman himself alighted, and any one acquainted with Java would immediately observe that he waited at the carriage door to assist an old Javanese baboe (nurse-maid). Three servants had delivered themselves out of the little leather cupboard that was stuck to the back of the coach, after the manner of a young oyster on an old one.

The gentleman who had first alighted had offered his hand to the Regent and the Controller Verbrugge, which they accepted with respect; and by their attitude you could see that they were aware of the presence of an important personage. It was the Resident of Bantam, the great province of which Lebak is a district,—a Regency, or, in official language, an Assistant Residency. I have often, when reading works of fiction, been offended at the little respect of the authors for the taste of the public, [87]and more than ever with anything comical or burlesque; a person is made to speak, who does not understand the language, or at least pronounces it badly; a Frenchman is made to speak Dutch thus: “Ka Kaurv na de Krote Krak,” or “Krietje Kooit Keen Kare Kroente Kraakwek.”7 For want of a Frenchman, a stammerer is selected, or a person “created,” whose hobby consists of two words recurring every moment. I have witnessed the success of a foolish vaudeville, because there was somebody in it who was always saying: “My name is Meyer.” I think this manner of being witty too cheap, and to tell you the truth, I am cross with you, if you think this funny. But now, I have to introduce to you something of that kind myself. I have to show you from time to time a person—I shall do it as seldom as possible—who had, indeed, a manner of speaking which makes me fear to be suspected of an unsuccessful effort to make you laugh; and, therefore, I must assure you that it is not my fault, if the very sedate Resident of Bantam, of whom I am speaking, is so peculiar in his mode of expressing himself, that it is very difficult for me to sketch that, without giving myself the appearance of seeking to produce the effect of wit by means of tic.8 He spoke as if there stood after each [88]word a period, or even a long pause; and I cannot find a better comparison for the distance between his words than the silence which follows the “Amen” after a long prayer in church; which is, as every one knows, a signal of the proper time to cough or blow one’s nose. What he said was generally well considered, and if he could have persuaded himself to omit those untimely pauses, his sentences would have been, in a rhetorical point of view at least, passable, but all that crumbling, stuttering, and ruggedness, made listening to him very tedious. One often stumbled at it, for generally, if you commenced to reply, thinking the sentence finished, and the remainder left to your ingenuity, the remaining words came on as the stragglers of a defeated army, and made you think that you had interrupted him,—an idea which is always disagreeable. The public at Serang, such persons at least as were not in the service of the Government, called his conversation ‘slimy,’ but Government employés were more circumspect. I do not think this word very nice, but I must confess that it expressed very well the principal quality of the Resident’s eloquence. As yet I have said nothing of Max Havelaar and his wife,—for these were the two persons who had alighted from the carriage after the Resident, with their child and the ‘baboe;’ and perhaps it might be sufficient to leave the description of their appearance and character to the current of events and your proper imagination. But as I am now occupied with [89]descriptions, I will tell you that Madam Havelaar was not beautiful, but that she still had in language and look something very charming, and she showed very plainly, by the ease of her manner, that she had been in the world, and was at home in the higher classes of society. She had not that stiffness and unpleasantness of snobbish respectability which thinks that it must torment itself and others with “constraint,” in order to be considered distingué; and she did not care much for appearances which are thought much of by other women. In her dress too she was an example of simplicity. A white muslin Coadjoe9 with a blue Cordelière,—I believe they call this in Europe peignoir,—was her travelling costume. Round her neck she wore a thin silk cord, from which hung two little medallions, invisible, because they were concealed in the folds of her dress. Her hair à la Chinoise, with a garland of melati10 in the Kondek,11—completed her toilette.

I said that she was not beautiful, and yet I should not like you to think her ugly. I hope that you will find her beautiful as soon as I have an opportunity to show her to you, burning with indignation at what she called the “disregard of genius” when her Max was concerned, or when she was animated with an idea in connexion with the welfare of her child. [90]

It has too often already been said that the face is the mirror of the soul, for us to speak well of an immovable face that has nothing to reflect, because there is no soul reflected in it. Well, she had a noble soul, and certainly he must be blind who did not think her face very beautiful, when that soul could be read in it.

Havelaar was a man of about thirty-five years. He was slender and active in his movements; except his very short and expressive upper lip, and his large pale blue eyes—which, if he was in a calm humour, had something dreamlike, but which flashed fire if he was animated with a grand idea—there was nothing particular in his appearance. His light hair hung flat round his temples, and I can believe very well, that if you saw him for the first time, you would not arrive at the conclusion, that there was a person before you possessing rare qualities both of head and heart. He was full of contradictions: sharp as a lancet, and tender-hearted as a girl, he always was the first himself to feel the wound which his bitter words had inflicted; and he suffered more than the wounded. He was quick of comprehension, grasped immediately the highest and the most intricate matters, liked to amuse himself with the solution of difficult questions, and to such pursuits would devote all pains, study, and exertion. Yet often he did not understand the most simple thing, which a child could have explained to him. Full of love for truth and justice, he often neglected his most simple [91]and nearest obligations to remedy an injustice which lay higher, or further, or deeper, and which allured him more by the perhaps greater exertion of the struggle. He was chivalrous and gallant, but often like that other Don Quixote he wasted his valour on a windmill. He burned with insatiable ambition, which made him look on all the ordinary distinctions of social life as vanities, and yet he considered his greatest happiness to consist in a calm, domestic, secluded life. He was a poet in the highest sense of the word; at the sight of a spark he dreamed of solar systems; peopled them with creatures of his own creation, felt himself to be lord of a world, which he had animated, and yet could immediately thereupon have a conversation on the price of rice, the rules of grammar, or the economic advantages of the Egyptian system of artificial incubation. No science was entirely unknown to him: he “guessed intuitively” what he did not know, and possessed in a very high degree the gift of using the little he knew (every one knows a little, and he, though knowing more than some others, was no exception to this rule) in a way that multiplied the measure of his knowledge. He was punctual and orderly, besides being exceedingly patient; but precisely because punctuality, order, and patience were difficult to him,—his mind being somewhat wild,—slow and circumspect in judging of affairs; though this seemed not to be the case with those who heard him reach his conclusions so quickly. His [92]impressions were too vivid to be thought durable, and yet he often proved that they were durable. All that was grand and sublime allured him, and at the same time he was simple and naïf as a child. He was honest, above all things where honesty became magnanimity, and would have left unpaid hundreds which he owed because he had given away thousands. He was witty and entertaining where he felt that his wit was understood, but otherwise blunt and reserved: cordial to his friends; a champion of sufferers; sensible to love and friendship; faithful to his given word; yielding in trifles, but firm as a rock where he thought it worth the trouble to show character; humble and benevolent to those who acknowledged his intellectual superiority, but troublesome to those who desired to oppose it; candid from pride, and sometimes reserved, where he feared that his straightforwardness might be mistaken for ignorance; equally susceptible to sensuous and spiritual enjoyment; timid and ineloquent where he thought he was not understood, but eloquent when he felt that his words fell on fertile soil; slow when he was not urged by an incitement that came forth from his own soul, but zealous, ardent, where this was the case; moreover, he was affable, polite in his manners, and blameless in behaviour,—such was within a little the character of Havelaar.

I say, “within a little,” for if all definitions are difficult, this is particularly the case in the description of a [93]person who differs much from the every-day cast of men.

That is also the reason, I think, why the poets of romance generally make their heroes either devils or angels. Black or white is easy to paint, but it is more difficult to produce the varieties between these two extremes, when truth must be respected, and neither side coloured too dark or too light. I feel that the sketch which I have tried to give of Havelaar is very imperfect. The materials before me are of so extensive a nature that they impede my judgment by excess of richness, and I shall perhaps again refer to this by way of supplement, while developing the events which I wish to communicate to you. This is certain,—he was an uncommon man, and surely worthy of careful study. I see even now, that I have neglected to give, as one of his chief characteristics, that he understood at the same time, and with the same quickness, the ridiculous and the serious side of things,—a peculiar quality, imparting unconsciously to his manner of speaking a sort of humour which made his listeners always doubt whether they were touched by the deep feeling that prevailed in his words, or had to laugh at the drollery that interrupted at once the earnestness of them.

It was very remarkable that his appearance, and even his emotions, gave so few traces of his past life. The boast of experience has become a ridiculous commonplace; there [94]are people who have floated for fifty or sixty years in the stream in which they think to swim, and who can tell of that time little more than that they have removed from A—— Square to B—— Street, and nothing is more common than to hear those very persons boast of experience, who got their grey hairs so very easily. Other people think that they may found their claims to experience on external vicissitudes, without its appearing from anything that they have been affected in their inner life. I can imagine that to witness, or even to take part in, important events, may have little or no influence on the souls of some men. Who entertains a doubt of this, may ask himself if experience may be ascribed to all the inhabitants of France who were forty or fifty years old in 1815? And yet they were all persons who saw, not only the acting of the great drama which commenced in 1789, but had even played a more or less important part in that drama.

And, on the contrary, how many persons undergo a series of emotions without the external circumstances seeming to give occasion for it. Think of “Robinson Crusoe,” of Pellico’s captivity; of the charming “Picciola,” of Saintine; of the struggle in the breast of an old maid, who cherished through her whole life but one love, without ever betraying by a single word what were the feelings of her heart; of the emotions of the philanthropist, who, without being externally involved in the current of [95]events, is ardently interested in the welfare of fellow-citizens or fellow-creatures, the more he alternately hopes and fears, the more he observes every change, kindles into enthusiasm for a beautiful idea, and burns with indignation if he sees it pushed away and trampled upon by those who, for some time at least, were stronger than beautiful ideas. Think of the philosopher, who from out his cell tries to teach the people what truth is, if he has to remark that his voice is overpowered by devout hypocrisy or adventurous quacks. Think of Socrates, not when he empties the poisoned cup—for I speak here of the experience of the mind, and not of that which owes its existence to external circumstances,—how intensely sad his soul must have been, when he, who loved what is right and true, heard himself called a corrupter of youth and a despiser of the gods. Or better still, think of Christ, gazing with such profound sadness on Jerusalem, and complaining that it “would not!”

Such a cry of grief—above that of the poisoned cup, or cross—does not come from an untried heart. There must have been suffering——there is experience!

This outburst has escaped me,—it now stands, and may remain. Havelaar had experienced much. Will you have, for instance, something that counterbalances the removing from A—— Street? He had suffered shipwreck more than once, he had experience of fire, insurrection, assassination, war, duels, luxury, poverty, hunger, cholera, love, [96]and “loves.” He had visited France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, England, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Egypt, Arabia, India, China, and America. As to his vicissitudes, he had many opportunities of experience, and that he had truly experienced much, that he had not gone through life without catching the impressions which it offered him so plentifully, was evidenced by the quickness of his mind and the susceptibility of his soul. What excited the wonder of all who knew or could conjecture how much he had experienced and suffered, was that you could see so little of that on his face. Certainly there was something like fatigue in his features, but this made you think rather of prematurely ripe youth than of approaching old age; yet approaching old age it ought to have been, for in India the man of thirty-five years is no longer young. His emotions too had remained young, as I said before. He could play with a child, and as a child, and often he complained that little Max was still too young to fly a kite, because he, “great Max,” liked that so very much. With boys he played “leap-frog,” and liked to draw a pattern for the girls’ embroidery: he even often took the needle from them and amused himself with that work, though he always said that they could do something better than that “mechanical counting of stitches.” With young men of eighteen he was a young student, liked to sing his Patriam canimus with them, or Gaudeamus igitur,—yes, I am not even quite certain, that not long ago, when [97]he was in Amsterdam on leave, he pulled down a sign-board which did not please him, because a nigger was painted on it, chained to the feet of an European with a long pipe in his mouth, and under which was written, of course, “The smoking young merchant.”

The ‘baboe’ whom he had helped out the coach resembled all ‘baboes’ in India when they are old. If you know that sort of servants, I need not tell you how she looked, and if you do not, I cannot tell you. This only distinguished her from other nurses in India, that she had little to do; for Madam Havelaar was an example of care for her child, and what there was to do for or with her little Max, she did herself, to the great astonishment of many other ladies, who did not think proper to act as “slaves to their children.” [98]

The Resident of Bantam introduced the Regent and the Controller to the new Assistant Resident. Havelaar courteously saluted both these functionaries; the Controller (there is always something painful in meeting a new superior) he placed at once at his ease with a few friendly words, as if he wished immediately to introduce a sort of familiarity that would make intercourse easy. With the Regent his meeting was as it ought to be with a person entitled to a gold payong,1 at the same time his younger brother. With grave affability he rebuked his too great civility, which had brought him, in such weather, to the confines of his district, which, according to the rules of etiquette, the Regent was not bound to do.

“Indeed, Mr. Adhipatti, I am angry with you for having given yourself so much trouble on my account.——I thought I should see you first at Rankas-Betong.” [99]

“I wished to see Mr. Assistant Resident as soon as possible,” said the Adhipatti, “to make his acquaintance.”

“Certainly, certainly, I am obliged; but I do not like to see a person of your rank and years exert himself too much——and on horseback too!”

“Yes, Mr. Assistant Resident! where duty calls me, I am even now always active and vigorous.”

“That is too self-exacting——is it not, Mr. Resident?”

“Mr. Adhipatti——is——very——”

“Very well; but there is a limit * *”

“—zealous,” drawled the Resident.

“Very well; but there is a limit,” Havelaar had to say again, as if to swallow the former words. “If you agree to it, Resident, we will make room in the carriage. The ‘baboe’ can remain here; we will send her a tandoo2 from Rankas-Betong. My wife will take Max on her lap——won’t you, Tine? there is room enough.”

“It——is——very——”

“Verbrugge, we will make room for you too; I don’t see——”

“—well,” continued the Resident.

“I don’t see why you should needlessly ride on horseback through the mud; there is room for all of us: we can then make acquaintance with each other——can’t we, Tine?—we will arrange it. Here, Max—look here, Verbrugge, [100]is not this a pretty little fellow?—’tis my little boy, Max!”

The Resident had seated himself with the Adhipatti. Havelaar called Verbrugge to ask him who was the owner of that grey horse with red trappings; and when Verbrugge went to the entrance of the ‘pendoppo’ to see what horse he meant, he put his hand on his shoulder and asked—

“Is the Regent always so attentive?”

“He is a strong man for his years, Mr. Havelaar, and you understand that he would like to make a good impression on you.”

“Yes, I understand that. I have heard much good of him——he is an educated man?”

“Oh, yes——”

“And he has a large family?”

Verbrugge looked at Havelaar, as if he did not understand the transition. This style often presented difficulties to those who did not know him. The quickness of his mind often made him omit in conversation some links in the reasoning; and although these links followed each other with regularity in his thoughts, he could not take it amiss on the part of one who was not so quick, or accustomed to his quickness, if he stared at him on such an occasion with the unuttered question on his lips—“Are you mad?——or what is the matter?”

Some such expression appeared in the face of Verbrugge; [101]and Havelaar had to repeat the question, before the Controller replied—

“Yes, he has a very large family.”

“And do they build Medjiets3 in the province?” Havelaar continued, again in a tone which, quite in contradiction with the words, seemed to express his belief that there was some connexion between these mosques and the large family of the Regent.

Verbrugge answered that indeed much labour was bestowed on the mosques.

“Yes, yes, just as I thought,” replied Havelaar. “And now tell me if they are much in arrear with their land-taxes?”

“Yes, there is room for improvement——”

“Exactly so, and above all things in the district ‘Parang-Koodjang,’ ”4 added Havelaar, as if he thought it easier to reply himself.

“What does the taxation of this year amount to?” he continued; and Verbrugge hesitating a moment, as if to consider his reply, Havelaar anticipated him in the same breath—

“Very well, very well, I know it already—sixty-eight thousand and a few hundreds—fifteen thousand more than last year—but only six thousand more than in the year 1845—we have made since 1843 an augmentation of eight thousand—and the population too is very thin—yes, in [102]twelve years we have had an increase of only eleven per cent., and even this statement is questionable, for the statistics were formerly very inexactly kept—and farther!—from 1850 to 1851 there is even a diminution—and the cattle market does not flourish—that is a bad omen * * * What the deuce! look how that horse jumps and rears——come here, Max!”

Verbrugge saw that he would not have much to teach the new Assistant Resident, and that there was no question of ascendency arising from “local acquaintance,” an advantage which the good fellow had not desired.

“But it is a matter of course,” continued Havelaar, taking Max in his arms; “in Tjikandi and Bolang they like it—and so do the rebels in the Lampoons.5 I recommend myself to your co-operation, Mr. Verbrugge; the Regent is a man old in years——his son-in-law is still district-chief? All things considered, I think him to be a person who deserves indulgence——I mean the Regent——I am very glad that there is so much poverty here——I hope to remain here a long time.”

Thereupon he shook hands with Verbrugge, and the latter returned with him to the table, where the Resident, the Regent, and Madam Havelaar were seated, the Controller having perceived more than five minutes before that “this Mr. Havelaar was not such a fool” as the [103]Commandant thought. Verbrugge was not at all ill furnished with intellect, and he who knew the province of Lebak almost as well as it is possible to know an extensive region, where nothing is printed, began to feel that there was surely some connexion between the apparently incoherent questions of Havelaar, and, at the same time, that the new Assistant Resident, though he had never been in the province, knew something of what happened there. Verbrugge did not understand, it is true, why he had rejoiced at the poverty of Lebak, but he supposed he had misunderstood that expression; and afterwards, when Havelaar often said the same, he understood how good and noble was that joy.

Havelaar and Verbrugge seated themselves at the table, and while drinking tea, and speaking of indifferent matters, we all waited, till Dongso came in to tell the Resident that fresh horses were put to the carriage. All took their places as well as they could in the carriage, and off it went. To speak was difficult, because of the jolting and bruising. Max was kept quiet with pisang;6 his mother had him on her lap, and would not acknowledge that she was tired, when Havelaar proposed to relieve her of the heavy boy. During a compulsory rest in a mud-hole, Verbrugge asked the Resident if he had yet mentioned Madam Slotering? [104]

“Mr. Havelaar——has——said——”

“Of course, Verbrugge, why not? that lady can stay with us: I should not like——”

“that——it——was——good,” continued the Resident, with much difficulty.

“I should not like to forbid my house to a lady in such circumstances. That is a matter of course,—is it not, Tine?”

Tine, too, was of opinion that it was a matter of course.

“You have two houses at Rankas-Betong,” Verbrugge said; “there is room enough for two families.”

“But, even if this were not the case——”

“I——should——not——dare——”

“Well, Resident,” said Madam Havelaar, “there is no doubt about it.”

“to——promise——it,——for——it——is——”

“Were they ten of them, if they only liked to be with us——”

“a——great——deal——of——trouble——and——she——is——”

“But to travel at such a time is an impossibility, Resident.”

A heavy jolt of the carriage, just got out of the mud, put a point of exclamation after the declaration that to travel was an impossibility for Madam Slotering. Every one had said the usual “Oh!” which follows such a jolt; Max had recovered in his mother’s lap the ‘pisang’ [105]which he lost by the shock, and we were already pretty near to the next mud-hole before the Resident could resolve to finish his phrase, by adding—

“a——native——woman.”

“Oh, that makes no difference,” explained Madam Havelaar. The Resident nodded, as if he thought it good that the matter was thus arranged, and as it was so difficult to speak, we ended the conversation. This Madam Slotering was the widow of Havelaar’s predecessor, who had died two months ago. Verbrugge, who had been charged ad interim with the duties of Assistant Resident, would have had a right to occupy, during that time, the large mansion which had been erected at Rankas-Betong, as in every district, for the head of the Government. Still he had not done so, partly because he feared that he should have to remove too soon, partly that this lady with her children might continue to occupy it. Yet there would have been room enough, for besides the large mansion for the Assistant Resident, there was near it, in the grounds, another house, that had served for the same purpose formerly, and though in a decayed condition, was still very inhabitable.

Madam Slotering had asked the Resident to intercede for her with the successor of her husband, and obtain permission for her to inhabit that old house till after her confinement, which she expected in a few months. This was the request which had been granted so readily by [106]Havelaar and his wife, for hospitable they were in the highest degree.

The Resident had said that Madam Slotering was a “native woman.” This needs some explanation for readers who are not acquainted with India; for otherwise they would be apt to come to the wrong conclusion—that she was a Javanese woman. European society in India is very sharply divided into two different parts, the Europeans proper, and those who, though lawfully belonging to the same jurisdiction, were not born in Europe, and have more or less Indian blood in their veins. In honour of the notions of humanity prevailing in the Indies, I hasten to add, that however clearly in social intercourse the difference between the two classes of persons, both having, in contradistinction to the native, the name of Europeans, may be marked, this separation has by no means the barbarous characteristic which predominates in America. I do not deny that there is still much injustice and exclusiveness in the relation of the parties, and that the word liplap7 sounded often in my ears as a proof how removed the white man, not being a ‘liplap,’ often is from true civilisation. It is true that the ‘liplap’ is only by exception admitted into society; that he is generally considered, if I may be allowed to make use of a very vulgar expression, “as not being thoroughbred;” but such an [107]exclusion or slight is seldom defended as a principle. Every one is at liberty to choose his own companions, and one cannot take it amiss in the European proper, if he prefers the conversation of persons of his own nationality to that of persons who, not to speak of the greater or less esteem in which they are held in society, do not agree with his impressions or ideas, or—and this is perhaps the main point,—whose prejudices have taken a different direction from his own.

The ‘liplap’ has many good qualities, so has the European. Both have many bad qualities; in this way too they resemble each other. But the good and bad qualities which they have are too distinctive for intercourse between them to be, generally speaking, productive of mutual satisfaction. Moreover, and this is in a great measure the fault of the Government, the ‘liplap’ is often very badly educated. We are not now inquiring how the European would be if from youth he had been impeded in his mental development; but this is certain, that, generally speaking, the small mental development of the ‘liplap’ stands in the way of his equality with the European, and even where an individual ‘liplap’ is distinctly superior to a certain European, he is kept down on account of his origin. There is nothing new in this. It was a part of the policy of William the Conqueror to raise the most insignificant Normans above the most intelligent Saxons, and every Norman devoted himself to [108]furthering the ascendency of the Normans in general, for the advantage of himself in particular, because he often would have been most insignificant without the influence of his countrymen as the prevailing party.

From anything of this kind arises a priori a constraint, which can only be removed by philosophical liberal designs on the part of the Government.

That the European who belongs to the dominant race accommodates himself very easily to this artificial ascendency speaks for itself; but it is often curious to hear a person who received his education in one of the lowest streets of Rotterdam ridicule the ‘liplap’ because he makes mistakes in pronunciation and grammar. A ‘liplap’ may be polite, well educated, or learned—there are such——as well as the European, who counterfeiting illness stayed away from the ship in which he had dishes to wash, and is now at the head of a commercial undertaking which made prodigious profits on indigo in 18—, long before he had the shop in which he sells hams and fowling-pieces——as soon as this European perceives that the best educated ‘liplap’ has some difficulty not to confound the h and g, he laughs at the stupidity of the man who does not know what is the difference between a “gek” and a “hek” (fool and hedge).

But to prevent him from laughing at that, he ought to know that in the Arabic and Malay languages, the cha and the hha are expressed by one and the same sign[109]—that Hieronymus becomes Jerome, viâ Geronimo, that we make Guano out of Huano, and that we say in Dutch for Guild Heaume—Huillem or Willem (William). This is rather too much to expect of a person who made his fortune in the indigo trade.

Yet such a European cannot converse with such a ‘liplap.’

I understand how Willem (William) is derived from Guillaume, and must confess, that I have made acquaintance with many ‘liplaps,’ especially in the Moluccas or Spice Islands, who surprised me with the extent of their knowledge, and who gave me the idea that we Europeans, whatever advantages we possess, are often, and not comparatively speaking merely, much behind these poor pariahs, who have to struggle from their cradle upwards with an artificial, studied inferiority, and the prejudice against their colour.

But Madam Slotering was once for all guaranteed against faults in the Dutch language, because she spoke Malay. We shall see more of her afterwards when we are drinking tea with Havelaar, Tine, and little Max in the fore-gallery of the Assistant Resident’s mansion at Rankas-Betong, where our travelling company arrived at last safe and sound after having had to endure much jolting and bruising.

The Resident, who had only come along with us to install the new Assistant Resident in his office, intimated [110]his wish to return that same day to Serang, “because——he——”

Havelaar said he was likewise disposed to make all possible speed.

“——had——still——so——much——to——do.”

So it was arranged that we should all meet in half-an-hour, in the Regent’s large front portico. Verbrugge, who was prepared for this, had many days ago summoned to the capital8 the heads of the districts, the Patteh,9 the Kliwon, the Djaksa, the tax-gatherer, some ‘mantries’—in a word, all the native officials who had to assist at the ceremony.

The Adhipatti took his leave and drove home. Madam Havelaar inspected her new house, and was much pleased with it, above all things because the garden was so large: which she liked so on account of Max, who required to be much in the open air. The Resident and Havelaar had retired to dress; for at the solemnity which had to take place, the official costume was indispensable. Hundreds of people were assembled around the house, who had either followed the Resident’s carriage on horseback, or who had belonged to the retinue of the assembled chiefs. The police and other officials were running to and fro with much bustle; in short, all indicated that the monotony of that secluded spot was now broken. [111]

Soon the handsome carriage of the Adhipatti drove up the yard. The Resident and Havelaar, glittering with gold and silver, but their movement somewhat impeded by their own swords, entered it, and drove to the Regent’s mansion, where they were received with the music of gongs, gamlangs, and all sorts of stringed instruments. Verbrugge, too, who had put off his muddy costume, had already arrived. The inferior chiefs, according to Oriental usage, were sitting in a great ring, on mats upon the ground, and at the further end of the long gallery stood a table, at which the Resident, the Adhipatti, the Assistant Resident, the Controller, and two native grandees took their seats. Tea and pastry were served, and the simple ceremony began.

The Resident stood up and read the decree of the Governor-General, whereby Mr. Max Havelaar was appointed Assistant Resident of Bantam-Kidool (South Bantam), as Lebak is called by the natives. He then took the official paper, containing the oath which is required of those entering upon employments in general, providing, that “To be appointed or promoted to the employment of——, the candidate has neither promised nor given anything to any one, and will not promise or give anything; that he will be loyal and faithful to his Majesty the King of the Netherlands, obedient to his Majesty’s Representative in the Indies; that he shall punctually obey and cause to be obeyed the laws and [112]decrees that have been issued or shall be issued, and that he shall behave himself in everything as becomes a good ——(here Assistant Resident).” This was of course concluded with the sacramental expression: “So truly help me God Almighty.” Havelaar repeated the words of the oath as read to him. The promise to protect the native population against oppression and extortion ought to be considered as included in it, for after swearing that you will maintain the existing laws and regulations, you have only to do so, and you will consider a special oath superfluous. But it seems that the legislators have thought that abundance of fair words would do no harm, for they exact a special oath of the Assistant Residents, whereby that obligation is once more expressly mentioned, and Havelaar once more took God Almighty as a witness, that he “would protect the native population against oppression, ill-treatment, and extortion.”

To a nice observer, it would have been worth while to remark the difference in tone and manner between the Resident and Havelaar on this occasion. Both had often attended such a solemnity; the difference which I refer to was not, therefore, occasioned by their being more or less affected by a novel and unwonted spectacle, but was only a consequence of the very different characters of the two persons. The Resident, it is true, spoke a little quicker than he was used to do, because he only had to read the decree and oaths, which saved him the trouble [113]of seeking for the last words of what he had to say; but still all went on with a gravity and a seriousness which must have inspired the superficial spectator with a very high idea of the importance which he attached to this matter.

Havelaar, on the contrary, had something in expression of countenance, voice, and mien, when with uplifted finger he repeated the oath, as if he would say, “Of course, without ‘any oath,’ I should do that.” Any one having a knowledge of men would have had more confidence in his freedom from constraint than in the sedateness of the Resident. Is it not ridiculous indeed to think that the man whose vocation it is to do justice, the man into whose hands is given the weal or woe of thousands, should think himself bound by a few uttered sounds, if his heart does not feel itself obliged even without those sounds to do so?

We believe of Havelaar, that he would have protected the poor and oppressed wheresoever he might meet them, even if he had promised by “God Almighty” the reverse.

Thereupon followed a speech of the Resident, addressed to the chiefs, in which he introduced to them the Assistant Resident as lord-paramount of the district, and invited them to obey him, to perform punctually their duties, and other commonplaces. Then the chiefs were presented, every one in his turn, to Havelaar: he gave his hand to each of them, and the installation was at an end. [114]

Dinner was served at the house of the Adhipatti, and the Commandant Duclari was among the guests. Immediately after it was finished, the Resident, wishing to be the same evening at Serang, “because——he——had——so——much——business,” entered again his travelling coach, and so Rankas-Betong was soon again as quiet as can be expected of a small town in Java, inhabited only by a few Europeans, and moreover far from the highway. Duclari and Havelaar soon became acquainted; the Adhipatti seemed to be well contented with his “elder brother;” and Verbrugge said afterwards, that the Resident also, whom he had accompanied a part of his way to Serang, had spoken in very favourable terms of the family of Havelaar, who, on their journey to Lebak, had spent many days at his house; adding, that it was easy to foresee that Havelaar, who was in high esteem with the Government, would very probably be soon promoted to a higher office.

Max and “his Tine” had recently returned from a voyage to Europe, and were tired of what I once heard happily described as “the life of boxes.” They esteemed themselves, therefore, very happy, to inhabit at last, after many changes, a spot where they were at home.

Before this voyage to Europe, Havelaar had been Assistant Resident at Amboyna, where he had to struggle with many difficulties, because the population of that island was in a state of excitement and revolt, in consequence [115]of the many bad measures which had of late been taken; he had, with much energy, succeeded in repressing that spirit, but from vexation at the little assistance which the Government gave him in that affair, and from sorrow over the bad government which for many centuries has depopulated and corrupted the magnificent Moluccas (the reader should try if he can get to read what was written on that subject by the Baron Van der Capellen in 1825—the publications of this philanthropist are to be found in the Indian official papers of that year, and affairs have not since improved), from sorrow for all this he had become ill, and this had induced him to leave for Europe. Strictly considered, he had a right to a better choice than the poor unproductive district of Lebak, because his office at Amboyna was of more importance, and there, without an Assistant Resident as his superior, he had managed all the business himself. Moreover, long before he went to Amboyna, it was said that he would be appointed Resident, and, therefore, many were astonished that he got a district which gave him so little emolument, because many measure the importance of a function by the revenues it produces. Yet he himself did not complain about that. His ambition was not of the kind that he should ever play the beggar for a higher office or more money.

Yet the latter would have been useful to him, for in his voyages to Europe he had spent the little money which [116]he had saved in former years; he had even been obliged to leave debts behind, and he was, in a word, poor. But never had he considered his employment as a source of emolument, and when appointed at Lebak, he intended with contentment to pay up his arrears by economy; in which intention his wife, who was also simple in tastes and necessities, willingly seconded him.

But economy was a difficult thing to Havelaar. As for himself, he could be content with the bare necessaries of life; yea, even with less; but where others were in want of assistance, to help, to give, was a strong passion with him. He himself was aware of this foible; he considered with all the common-sense he had, how unjustly he acted in succouring any one, when he himself had a better claim to his own assistance, and felt this injustice the more when his Tine and Max, both of whom he loved so dearly, suffered through the consequence of his liberality. He often reproached himself for his good nature as a foible, as vanity, as a desire to be considered a prince in disguise: he promised amendment, and yet, whenever any one presented himself to his notice as the victim of adversity, he forgot all and helped him. Yet he had some bitter experience of the consequences of this too far-stretched virtue. A week before the birth of his little Max he had not money enough to buy the iron cradle wherein his darling was to rest; and a little before he had sacrificed the few ornaments of his wife, to assist [117]somebody who was certainly in better circumstances than he.

But all this was far behind them when they arrived at Lebak. With a joyful calmness they had taken possession of the house, “where they hoped now to remain for some time.” With peculiar satisfaction they had ordered the furniture at Batavia; they would make all so comfortable and snug. They showed each other the places where they should breakfast; where little Max should play; where the library should be; where he should read in the evening to her what he had written that day;—for he was always occupied in developing his ideas on paper—and when once these were printed, she thought that “people would see what her Max was——” But he had never given anything to the press, on account of scruples arising from modesty. He himself, at least, did not know how better to express that timidity, than by asking those who urged him to publicity, “Would you let your daughter walk the streets without a chemise?”

This was another saying which made his circle say “that Havelaar was a singular man,” and I do not say the contrary; but if you took the trouble to interpret his uncommon manner of speaking, you would perhaps find in that strange question about a girl’s dress the text for a treatise on intellectual modesty, which, shy of the glances of dull passers-by, retires behind the veil of maidenly timidity. [118]

Yes, they should be happy at Rankas-Betong, Havelaar and his Tine! The only care that oppressed them was the debts which they had left behind in Europe, augmented by the still unpaid expenses of the voyage back to the Indies, and of the furnishing of their house. But they would live on half, even a third of his income——perhaps he would soon be made Resident, and then all would be arranged in a few years——

“Yet I should be sorry, Tine, to leave Lebak; for I have many things to do here. You must be very economical, my dear, and perhaps we may pay off all even without promotion——then I hope to remain here for a long time.”

Now she needed no incitement to economy. It was not her fault that frugality had become necessary; but she had so completely identified herself with her Max that she did not consider this speech as a reproach, which, to be sure, it was not; for Havelaar knew very well that he alone had been wrong through excessive liberality, and that her fault was this,—if fault there was on her side,—that she, out of love for her Max, had always approved of all that he did.

Yes, she had approved when he took those two poor women from the Nieuwstraat (New Street), who had never before left Amsterdam, and never had been out, to the Haarlem fair, under the odd pretext that the King had ordered him “to amuse little old women of respectable [119]character.” She approved of his entertaining the orphans of all the asylums in Amsterdam with gingerbread and almond-milk, and loading them with playthings. She perfectly understood that he had paid the hotel-bill of that family of poor singers, who wanted to go back to their country, but did not like to leave the goods behind, including the harp, and the violin, and the violoncello, which they wanted for their poor profession. She could not disapprove his bringing to her the girl, who in the evening had accosted him in the street, giving her food and lodging, and not pronouncing the “Go and sin no more!” before he had placed it in her power not to sin. She approved of her Max causing the piano to be brought back to the parlour of the father of a family, whom she heard say “how sorry he was that by his bankruptcy the girls were deprived of their music.” She quite understood that her Max had redeemed the family of slaves at Menado who were so intensely afflicted at having to mount upon the auctioneer’s table. She thought it quite a matter of course that Max gave other horses in return for those that had been ridden to death by the officers of the Bayonnaise. She did not object to his lodging at Menado and at Amboyna all the survivors of the ship-wrecked American whalers, and thought himself far above sending in an innkeeper’s bill to the American Government. She understood how it was that the officers of every man-of-war that arrived lodged for the most part [120]with Max, and that his house was their favourite pied-à-terre. Was not he her Max?—Was it not too petty, too shabby, too absurd, to bind him, who had such princely notions, to the rules of frugality and economy applicable to other persons? And moreover, although there might sometimes be a disproportion between revenues and expenses, was not Max, “her Max,” destined for a brilliant career?—Ought not he to be soon in a position which would allow a free course to his high-minded passions without exceeding his revenues? Was not her Max destined to become a Governor-General, or a King? Nay, was it not strange that he was not yet a King? If she had any fault at all, it was her deep affection for Havelaar; and here more than ever it should be: that much must be forgiven those who have loved much!

But there was nothing which she had to be forgiven. Without participating in the exaggerated ideas which she cherished about her Max, it appeared sufficiently evident that he had good prospects, and that, when these prospects were realized, the disagreeable consequences of his liberality would soon vanish. But yet another reason excused his apparent carelessness and hers. At an early age she had lost both parents, and had been educated by her father’s relatives. At the time of her marriage, they told her that she had a small fortune, which was accordingly handed over to her; but Havelaar discovered, from some letters of earlier date, and from some loose notes [121]which she kept in a writing-desk that had belonged to her mother, that her family had been very rich; but he could not make out where, or how, this wealth had been lost. She, who had never herself taken any interest in money matters, could give little or no information on this subject. When Havelaar insisted upon some information concerning the former possessions of her family, he found that her grandfather, the Baron W., had emigrated with William VI.10 to England, and had been captain in the army of the Duke of York. It seemed that he had led a jolly life with the emigrant members of the Stadtholder’s household, which was considered by many to have occasioned the decline of his fortunes. He was afterwards killed at Waterloo, in a combat among the hussars of Boreel. The letters of her father, then a young man of eighteen, were touching to read,—as lieutenant of that corps, he had received in the same charge a sabre-cut on the head, from the consequences of which he died eight years afterwards in a state of madness,—letters to his mother, in which he lamented how he had sought in vain for his father’s corpse.

She remembered that her grandfather on the mother’s side had lived in very high style, and it appeared from some papers that he had been in possession of the post-offices [122]in Switzerland, in the same manner as till now, in a great part of Germany and Italy, this branch of revenue is an appanage of the princes of Tour and Taxis. Hence a large fortune was to be expected; but from some entirely unknown causes, nothing, or very little at least, was handed over to the second generation.

Havelaar did not learn the little that could be known of this matter till after his marriage; and while investigating it, he was surprised that the said writing-desk, with the contents, which she preserved from a feeling of filial love, without knowing that it perhaps contained papers of importance in a financial point of view, had incomprehensibly disappeared. Disinterested as he was, he built on this and many other circumstances the idea that a romantic story was hidden in the background; and one cannot be angry with him that he, who was in want of so much for his style of living, desired that this romance should have a happy end. However this may be, whether there had been spoliation or not, it is certain that in Havelaar’s imagination something was produced which one could call—un rêve aux millions.

It is again strange, that he who would have so carefully examined and so sharply defended the right of another, though it might have been buried very deep beneath dusky papers and thick-webbed chicanery, here, where his own interest was at stake, carelessly neglected the moment when he ought to have taken the matter up. [123]It seemed as if he was ashamed of it, because it concerned here his own interest, and I believe for certain, that had “his Tine” been married to another, and he been intrusted to break the cobweb in which her ancestral fortunes remained hanging, Havelaar would have succeeded in putting “the interesting orphan” in the possession of the fortune she was entitled to. But now this interesting orphan was his wife; her fortune was his: and he thought it something mean and degrading, something derogatory, to ask in her name, “Don’t you owe me something more?”

Yet he could not shake off this dream of ‘millions,’ were it only to have an excuse at hand for the often repeated self-reproach that he spent too much money.

But a short time before returning to Java, when he had already suffered much under the pressure of impecuniosity, when he had to bow his proud head under the furca caudina of many a creditor, he succeeded in conquering his idleness or shyness, and set himself to work for the millions to which he still thought he had a right. And they sent him in reply a long-standing bill, an argument against which, as everybody knows, nothing can be said.

But they would be economical at Lebak. And why not? In such an uncivilized country you will not see girls in the streets who have a little honour to sell for a little food. There you will not meet persons who live on problematic [124]employments. There it does not happen, that a family suddenly loses all through a change of fortune——and of this kind were generally the rocks on which the good intentions of Havelaar had made shipwreck. The number of Europeans in this district was too small to be noticed; and the Javanese at Lebak were too poor to become interesting through any increase of poverty. Tine did not think of all this; for then she ought to have thought more than her love for Max permitted of the causes of their less favourable circumstances. There was something, however, in their new surroundings that breathed a calm, an absence of all cases of falsely romantic appearance, which had made Havelaar so often say in former days: “Is not this, Tine, a case from which I cannot withdraw?” And the answer always was: “Certainly, Max, you cannot withdraw from it.”

We shall see how the simple, apparently still life of Lebak, cost Havelaar more than all the former excesses of his heart taken together.

But that they did not know! They expected the future with confidence, and were so happy in their love, and in the possession of their child.

“How full this garden is of roses!” said Tine, “and look at the rampeh, and tjempaka, and melati,11 and beautiful lilies——.”

And children as they were, they were delighted with [125]their new house; and when in the evening Duclari and Verbrugge, after a visit to Havelaar, returned to their common home, they made many remarks on the childlike joy of the newly arrived family.

Havelaar went to his office, and remained there till the next morning. [126]

Havelaar had requested the Controller to invite the chiefs who were at Rankas-Betong to stay there till the next day to be present at the Sebah (council) which he intended to convene. Such a council generally took place once a month; but either because he wished to spare some chiefs who lived very far from the capital the unnecessary journey to and fro, or because he wished to speak to them immediately impressively, and without waiting for the appointed day, he chose the next morning for the first Sebah.

To the left of his mansion, but in the same grounds, and opposite the house which Madam Slotering occupied, stood a building, part of which was used for the offices of the Assistant Resident, where was also the Treasury. This building contained a large open gallery, which made it a very good place for such a council. There the chiefs assembled betimes in the morning. Havelaar entered, saluted, and sat down. He received the written reports [127]on agriculture, police, and justice, and put them aside for after examination.

Every one expected an address such as the Resident had delivered the day before, and it was not quite certain that Havelaar himself intended to say anything else to the chiefs; but you ought to have seen him on such occasions to conceive how he, at speeches like those, grew excited, and, through his peculiar way of speaking, communicated a new colour to the most common things; how he became taller, so to speak, how his glance shot fire, how his voice passed from a flattering softness to a lancet sharpness, how the metaphors flowed from his lips, as if he was scattering some precious commodity round about him, which, however, cost him nothing, and how, when he ceased, every one looked at him with an open mouth, as if asking, “Good God! who are you?”

It is true that he himself who spoke on such occasions as an apostle, as a seer, afterwards did not exactly know how he had spoken, and his eloquence was therefore more powerful to astonish and to touch, than to convince by solid argument. He would have excited the martial spirit of the Athenians to frenzy as soon as they had decided to go to war with Philip; but he would not have succeeded so well, if it had been his task to incite them to this war through cogency of reasoning. His harangue to the chiefs of Lebak was of course in Malay,—a circumstance which added greatly to its effect, [128]because the simplicity of the Oriental tongues gives to many expressions a force which has been lost in the greater formality of the languages of the West; whilst, on the other hand, it is difficult to render the sweetness of the Malay in any other language. We must, moreover, take into consideration, that the greater part of his listeners consisted of simple, but not at all stupid men, and at the same time Orientals, whose impressions differ considerably from our own.

Havelaar spoke almost as follows:—

“Mr. Radeen Adhipatti,1 Regent of Bantam-Kidool,2 and you Radeens Demang, that are chiefs of the districts of this province, and you Radeen Djaksa, administrator of justice, and you too, Radeen Kliwon, governor of the chief town, and you Radeens, Mantries, and all that are chiefs in the district of Bantam-Kidool——I salute you.

“And I tell you that I feel joy in my heart when I see you all assembled, and listening to the words of my mouth.

“I know that there are amongst you men who excel in knowledge and goodness of heart: I hope to enlarge my knowledge by contact with yours; for it is not so great as I should wish; and I certainly love probity, but I perceive that there are often in my soul faults that overshadow the probity, and hinder the growth; for you know [129]how the large tree pushes away and kills the little tree. Therefore I shall look to those amongst you who excel in virtue, to try to become better than I am.

“I heartily salute you all.

“When the Governor-General commanded me to come to you as Assistant Resident in this district, my heart rejoiced. You know that I had never set foot on Bantam-Kidool; therefore I have obtained information about your district, and have seen that there is much good in Bantam-Kidool. Your people possess rice-fields in the valleys, and there are rice-fields on the mountains. And you wish to live in peace, and you do not desire to live in those districts that are inhabited by other persons. Yes, I know that there is much good in Bantam-Kidool.

“But not on that account alone did my heart rejoice; for elsewhere, also, I should have found much good.

“But I discovered that your population is poor, and therefore I rejoiced with all my soul.

“For I know that Allah loves the poor, and that He gives riches to whomsoever He will try; but to the poor He sends all who speak His word, that they may rise in the midst of their misery.

“Does not He give rain when the blade would otherwise wither, and a dewdrop in the cup of the thirsty flower?

“And is it not sublime to be sent to seek them that [130]are weary, who have lingered behind after the work and have fallen down exhausted on the road, because their knees were not strong enough to carry them to the place where they should receive their wages? Should not I be glad to give a helping hand to him who tumbled into the ditch, and a staff to him who climbs the mountains?

“Should not my heart leap with joy when it sees that I have been selected amongst many to turn lamentation into prayer, weeping into thanksgiving?

“Yes, I am very glad to be in Bantam-Kidool.

“I said to the woman who shares my sorrows and increases my happiness:—

“ ‘Rejoice, for I see that Allah gives a blessing on the head of our child! He has sent me to a place where work is to be done, and He thought me worthy to be there before harvest-time. For the joy is not in cutting paddy;3 the joy is in cutting the paddy which one has planted. And the soul of man does not rejoice in wages, but in the labour that earns those wages.’ And I said to her: ‘Allah has given us a child; and there will come a time when he shall say: “Do you know that I am his son?” and then there will be those in the country who will greet him with love, who will put a hand on his head and say: “Sit down to our dinner, and live in our house, and take your portion of what we have; for we knew your father.” ’ [131]

“For, chiefs of Lebak, there is much to be done in your district.

“Tell me, is not the labourer poor? Does not your paddy often ripen for those who did not plant it? Are there not many wrongs in your country? Is not the number of your children small?

“Is there no shame in your souls when the natives of Bolang, which lies over there in the East, visit your country, and ask, ‘Where are the villages, and where the husbandmen, and why do not I hear the gamlang,4 which speaks joy out of a mouth of brass, nor the stamping of paddy by your daughters?’

“Is there no bitterness in journeying from here to the South coast, in seeing the mountains that have no water on their sides, or the plains where the buffalo never drew the plough?

“Yes, yes, I tell you, that your soul and mine are sad because of these things; and, therefore, we are grateful to Allah, that He has given us the power to labour here.

“For we have in this country fields for many, though the inhabitants are few. And it is not the rain which fails, for the summits of the mountains suck the clouds of heaven to the earth. And not everywhere are rocks that refuse a place to the root; for in many places the ground is soft and fertile, and calls for the grain, which it is willing to return you in a bended blade. And there is [132]no war in the country, whereby the paddy is trodden down while yet green, nor is there sickness to paralyse the patjol.5 Neither are the sunbeams more powerful than is necessary to ripen the grain, that has to be food for you and your children; nor banjers,6 that make you say, ‘Show me the place where I have sown.’

“Where Allah sends inundations that wash away the fields; where He hardens the ground as barren stones; where He makes the sun burn even to scorching; where He sends war to devastate the fields; where He slays with diseases, that make the hands weak, or with dryness that kills the corn——there, chiefs of Lebak, we bend our heads, and say: ‘His will be done!’

“But it is not so in Bantam-Kidool.

“I have been sent here to be your friend, your elder brother. Should not you warn your younger brother, if you saw a tiger in his way?

“Chiefs of Lebak, we have often committed faults, and our country is poor, because we have committed so many faults.

“For in Tjikandi, Bolang, and Krawang, in the regions round about Batavia, there are many men who were born in our country, and who have left our country.

“Why do they seek labour far from the place where they buried their parents? Why have they fled from the village where they were circumcised? Why do they [133]prefer the coolness of the tree that grows there, to the shade of our woods?

“And even there to the North-West, over the sea, are many who ought to be our children, but who have left Lebak to wander in foreign countries with Kris,7 and Klewang,8 and gun! And there they die miserably; for the Government has power to beat the rebels.

“I ask you, chiefs of Lebak, why have many gone away, not to be buried where they were born? Why does the tree ask, ‘Where is the man whom I saw playing at my foot when a child?’ ”

Havelaar waited here for a moment. To understand in some degree the impression which his words made, one ought to have heard and seen him. When he spoke of his child, there was a softness in his voice, something that was extremely touching, and which allured you to ask, “Where is the little one? I will at once kiss the child, that made his father speak so;” but when he soon afterwards passed with little order to the questions why Lebak was poor, and why so many inhabitants of these regions removed to other places, there was in his tone something which made you think of the noise that a drill makes when forcibly turned in hard wood. Yet he did not speak [134]very loud, neither did he put any stress on certain words; there was even something monotonous in his voice, but whether studied or natural, which by this very monotony made the impression of his words stronger on minds that were so particularly sensitive to such a language. His metaphors, which he always borrowed from the life that surrounded him, were to him as allies to make what he meant perfectly understood, and not, as often happens, troublesome appendages, which burden the phrases of orators, without adding any plainness to the conception of what is meant to be illustrated. We are now-a-days accustomed to the absurdity of the expression “Strong as a lion;” but he who first used this metaphor in Europe, showed that he had not drawn the comparison from the poetry of the soul, which furnishes figures of speech, and cannot speak otherwise, but that he had simply copied this from some book,—from the Bible, perhaps,—in which a lion was mentioned. For none of his hearers ever tried the strength of the lion, and it would therefore have been rather necessary to make them estimate that strength, by comparing the lion to some other creature whose strength was known to them, than otherwise.

You see, that Havelaar was truly a poet, that he, speaking of the rice-fields, that were on the mountains, directed his eyes thither through the open side of the hall, and that he really stood there; and in the imagination of [135]Havelaar’s hearers he really looked about and asked for the inhabitants of Lebak that had gone. He invented nothing; he heard the tree speak, and only thought that he repeated what he imagined to have heard so distinctly in his poetical inspiration.

Should any one, perhaps, be inclined to make the observation, that the originality of Havelaar’s manner of speaking is not so indisputable, as his language makes you think of the style of the prophets of the Old Testament, I must remind him of what I said before, that in moments of ecstasy he was indeed something of a seer, and that he, fed by the impressions communicated to him by living in forests and on mountains, and by the poesy-breathing atmosphere of the East, would probably not have spoken otherwise, even if he had never read the sublime poems of the Old Testament.

Do we not find, in the verses written by him in early youth, lines like the following, which were composed on the Salak—one of the highest summits of the Preangan Regencies,—in the exordium of which he displays the softness of his emotions, and then suddenly passes to the description of the thunder which he hears below him:—

Do you not feel that he could not have written the last two lines if he had not really heard God’s thunder, dictating to him in reverberating crashes along the mountain sides?

But he did not like to write poetry; it was, as he said, “like putting on a stiff corset,” and when he was induced to read anything of what he had written, he took pleasure in abusing his own work, either by reading in a ridiculous tone, or by stopping short at a most solemn place, and throwing in a pun which shocked his hearers. This was nothing more than a satire upon the disproportion between his soul and the corset which confined it.

Havelaar had ordered by a sign the customary tea and sweetmeats; but few of the chiefs partook of the refreshments. It appears that he had paused with premeditation at the end of his speech; and there was a reason for it. What must the chiefs have thought of his knowing already that so many had left Lebak with bitterness in their hearts? of his knowing already how many families had emigrated to neighbouring countries to avoid the poverty that reigned here? and of his knowing the fact that there are so many Bantammers amongst the bands in revolt against the Dutch Government? What [137]does he mean? what is he aiming at? who is concerned in his questions?

And some of them looked at the district chief of Parang-Koodjang. But most of them looked at the ground.

“Come here, Max,” said Havelaar, who perceived his child playing before the house, and the Adhipatti took the boy on his knee; but he was too wild to remain there long; he jumped away and ran round the large circle amusing the chiefs with his talk, and playing with the hilts of their weapons. When he came up to the Djaksa,9 who excelled all the others in his uniform, and thereby attracted the child, the Djaksa showed something on little Max’s head to the Kliwon,10 who sat near him, and who seemed to assent to an observation about it.

“Go away now, Max,” Havelaar said; “papa has something to say to these gentlemen,” and the little boy ran away, kissing his hands to them.

“Chiefs of Lebak! we are all of us in the service of the King of Holland. But he, who is just, and desires that we should perform our duty, is far from here. Thirty times a thousand thousand souls, nay more, are under his rule, but he cannot be near all of those who are dependent on his will.

“The Governor-General at Buitenzorg11 is just, and [138]desires that every one should do his duty; but powerful as he is, and commanding all authority in the cities, and the elders of the villages, and disposing of the army on land, and of the ships at sea, he likewise can no more than the King see where injustice has been done, for the injustice is far from him.

“And the Resident at Serang, who is lord of the Residency of Bantam, where live five times a hundred thousand men, desires that justice shall be done in his dominion, and that righteousness shall reign in those parts that obey him. But where injustice has been done he lives far from it, and whoever does wickedly, hides himself from his face because he fears punishment.

“And Mr. Adhipatti, who is Regent of South Bantam, wills that every one does good, and that there shall be no infamy in that country over which he is Regent.

“And I, who yesterday called God Almighty to witness that I would be just and merciful, that I would maintain justice without fear or hatred, that I would be ‘a good Assistant Resident,’ I wish to do my duty.

“Chiefs of Lebak! we all wish to do our duty.

“But if there should be amongst us any who neglect their duty for gain, who sell the Right for money, or who take away the buffalo from the poor, and bread from those who are hungry——who shall punish them?

“If any of you knew it, he would stop it, and the Regent would not suffer such an injustice to be done in his [139]Regency, and I myself should oppose it where I could, but if neither you, nor the Regent, nor I knew it——

“Chiefs of Lebak! who shall then do justice in Bantam-Kidool?

“Hear me, and I will tell you how justice would be done in such a case.

“There comes a time when our wives and children shall weep while preparing our shroud, and the passers-by shall say, ‘A man has died there.’ Then he who arrives in the villages shall bring the news of the death of him that has died, and the person who lodges him shall ask, ‘Who was the man that died?’

“ ‘He was good and just. He did justice, and drove not the suppliant from his door. He listened patiently to all who came to him, and returned that which had been taken away. And him who could not plough his land, because the buffalo had been taken out of his stables, he assisted to seek for the buffalo; and where the daughter had been carried off from the house of her mother, he sought the thief and brought the daughter back. And where work had been done, he did not withhold the wages, nor take away the fruit of him who planted the tree, nor the coat that was another’s, nor eat the food that belonged to the poor.’

“Then it shall be said in the villages:—

“ ‘Allah is great: Allah has taken him home. His will be done: a good man has died.’ [140]

“But again the passenger shall stand before a house and ask, ‘What is this, that the gamlang is silent, and the song of the maidens is hushed?’ And again it shall be said, ‘A man has died.’

“And whosoever journeys to the villages, shall sit in the evening with the host, and round about him the sons and daughters of the house, and the children of those who live in the village, and he shall say:—

“ ‘A man has died, who promised to be just; and he sold justice to every one who gave him money. He watered his field with the sweat of the labourer whom he had called away from his own labour. He did not pay the labourer his wages, but lived on the food of the poor. He became rich from the poverty of others. He had much gold and silver, and plenty of precious stones; but the labourer who lives in the neighbourhood did not know how to appease the hunger of his child. He smiled like a happy man; but there was gnashing of the teeth from the suppliant who sought justice. There was contentedness on his features; but there was no milk in the breasts of the mothers who would fain have given suck.’

“Then the people of the villages will say:—

“ ‘Allah is great——we curse no one!’

“Chiefs of Lebak! there comes a time when all of us must die!

“What shall be said in the villages where we have [141]had power, and what by the bystanders who witness the funeral? and what shall we answer if, after death, a voice speaks to our soul, and asks, ‘Why is there weeping in the fields, and how is it that the young men hide themselves? Who took the harvest out of the barn, and the buffalo that should have ploughed the fields out of the stall? What have you done with your brother whom I gave you to watch over? Why is the poor man sad? Why does he curse the fruitfulness of his wife?’ ”

Here Havelaar paused again for a few moments; and then continued, in the most simple tone possible, and as if nothing had been said to make an impression:—

“I wish to live on good terms with you, and therefore I beg you to regard me as your friend. Every one who has erred may reckon on a lenient sentence from me, for as I err so often myself, I shall not be severe; at least not in ordinary mistakes or negligences. Only where negligence becomes a custom, I will oppose it. Of faults of a more grave kind——of tyranny and extortion, I do not speak—such a thing shall not happen; is it not so, Regent?”

“Oh no, Mr. Assistant Resident, such a thing shall not happen in Lebak.”

“Well then, gentlemen, chiefs of Bantam-Kidool! let us be glad that our province is so poor. We have a noble work before us. If Allah preserve us alive, we shall take care that prosperity comes. The ground is fertile enough, [142]the population willing; if every one is suffered to remain in the enjoyment of the fruits of his labour, there is no doubt that within a short time the population will improve, as well both in the number of souls as in possessions and civilisation, for these things generally go hand in hand. I beg you again to regard me as a friend who will help you where he can, above all where injustice must be prevented. And now I commend myself to your co-operation.

“I will return to you the reports I have received on agriculture, cattle-breeding, police, and justice, with my orders.

“Chiefs of Lebak! I have said. You can return every one to his home. I cordially greet you all.”

He bowed, offered his arm to the old Regent, and conducted him to his house, where Tine awaited him in the gallery.

“Come, Verbrugge, don’t go home yet. Come, a glass of Madeira! And, yes, I must know that——Radeen Djaksa! stop a moment.”

Havelaar said this whilst all the chiefs, bowing low, prepared to return to their homes. Verbrugge, too, was about to take his leave, but returned with the Djaksa.

“Tine, I’ll take some Madeira; so will Verbrugge. I say, Djaksa! tell me what you said about Max to the Kliwon?

“Minta ampong (I beg your pardon), Mr. Assistant [143] Resident; I looked at his head, because you had spoken.

“What the deuce has his head to do with that? I have already forgotten what I said.”

“Sir, I said to the Kliwon——” [Tine approached, they spoke about little Max.]

“I said to the Kliwon, that the Sinjo” (Portuguese, Senko, which here means young gentleman, on the same principle as lucus a non lucendo) “was made for a king.”

Tine was glad to hear that——she thought so too!

“And the Adhipatti looked at the head of the little one, and to be sure! he too saw the oeser-oeseran,12 according to Javanese superstition destined to wear a crown.”

As etiquette did not permit the Djaksa a place in the presence of the Regent, he took his leave, and we were for some time together with the Regent without speaking of anything relative to the “service.” But the Regent asked all of a sudden, “if the money which was to the tax-gatherer’s credit could not be paid?”

“Certainly not,” said Verbrugge, “Mr. Adhipatti knows that this cannot be done till his responsibility ceases.”

Havelaar played with Max, but this did not prevent [144]him from reading in the Regent’s face that Verbrugge’s answer displeased him.

“Come, Verbrugge, don’t let us be troublesome,” said he, and he called for a clerk out of the office. “We will pray that his account will certainly be approved.”

After the Adhipatti had taken his leave, Verbrugge, who was a confirmed red-tapeist, remonstrated—

“But, Mr. Havelaar, that must not be! The tax-gatherer’s account is under examination at Serang.——Suppose anything to be wanting?”

“Then I will make it good,” Havelaar said.

Verbrugge did not understand this great consideration for the tax-gatherer.

The clerk soon returned with some papers; Havelaar signed his name, and ordered payment to be hastened.

“Verbrugge! I will tell you why I do this. The Regent has not a farthing in the house: his writer told me so——he himself wants this money, and the tax-gatherer will advance it to him. I would rather transgress, on my own responsibility, a form, than leave a man of his rank and years in perplexity. Moreover, Verbrugge! people at Lebak abuse their power in a fearful way——you ought to know it: do you know it?”

Verbrugge was silent.

“I know it!” Havelaar continued, “I do know it! Did not Mr. Slotering die in November? Well! the day after his death, the Regent forced the population to labour [145]in his rice-fields without payment. You ought to have known it——did you know it?”

Verbrugge did not know it.

“You ought to have known it. I know it,” continued Havelaar. “There you have the monthly reports of the districts,”—and he showed the parcel which he had received in the Council,—“look, I have opened nothing; there are statements of the number of labourers that have worked in the metropolis for the different chiefs.——Well, are these statements correct?”

“I have not yet seen them——”

“Neither have I; still I ask you if they are correct?——Were last month’s statements correct?”

Verbrugge was silent.

“I will tell it you: They were false! For three times the number of labourers had to work for the Regent that the orders regulating such matters permit, and they did not dare put this in the reports——Is what I say true?”

Verbrugge was silent.

“The reports which I received to-day are likewise false,” continued Havelaar; “the Regent is poor; the Regents of Bandong and Tjanjor are members of the family of which he is the head. He is an Adhipatti, and the Regent of Tjanjor is only a Tommongong, and because Lebak is not fit for coffee-culture, and therefore gives him no emolument, his revenues do not allow him to vie in magnificence and pomp with a simple Demang of the [146]Preangan Regencies, whose duty it would be to hold his nephews’ horses——Is that true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“He has nothing but his salary, and from that a deduction is made to pay off an advance which the Government gave him, when he——do you know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“When he desired to build a new mosque, for which much money was required. Moreover, many members of his family——do you know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Many members of his family (who do not properly belong to Lebak, and are therefore not much esteemed) range themselves as a troop of plunderers round him, and extort money from him——is that true?”

“Yes,” said Verbrugge.

“And when his purse is empty, which is often the case, they take, in his name, from the people what they like——is that so?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I am also well informed——but more about that by and by. The Regent, who is old, has for some years been ruled by a desire to become meritorious through gifts to the priests; he spends much money for the travelling expenses of pilgrims to Mecca, who bring him back all sorts of old relics and talismans——Is it not so?”

“Yes, that is true.” [147]

“Well, because of all this he is very poor. The Demang of Parang-Koodjang is his son-in-law. Where the Regent himself does not dare to take, out of shame for his rank, this Demang does it. But it is not the Demang alone—who courts the Regent by extorting money and goods from the poor population, and who carries the people away from their own rice-fields, by driving them to the Regent’s rice-fields; and he——! I will believe, that he would willingly act otherwise, but necessity compels him to make use of such means——Is not all this true, Verbrugge?”

“Yes, it is true,” said Verbrugge, who perceived more and more that Havelaar’s look was sharp.

“I knew,” said Havelaar, “that he had no money in his house. You heard this morning, that it is my intention to do my duty. I will not suffer injustice; God help me, I will not suffer that!” And he jumped up, and there was something in his tone quite different from that of the day before, while taking his official oath.—“But I will do my duty with leniency. I do not care to know too exactly what has happened. But all that happens henceforth is on my responsibility; I shall, therefore, take care of that. I hope to remain here a long time. Do you know, Verbrugge, that our vocation is noble indeed? But, do you know, also, that I ought to have heard from you all that I have just told you? I know you quite well, as well as I know who are in revolt on the South coast: you are a [148]good man, I know; but why did not you tell me of so much wrong going on here? You have been for two months temporary Assistant Resident, and moreover, you have been here a long time as Controller; you ought to know it.”

“Mr. Havelaar, I never served under any one like you;—there’s something very peculiar about you: don’t be offended.”

“Not at all; I know very well that I am not as all men——but what does that matter?”

“You communicate to others conceptions and ideas never heard of before.”

“No! they had fallen asleep in that despicable official stillness, whose style is: ‘I have the honour to be,’ and its feeling ‘the perfect satisfaction of the Government.’ No, Verbrugge! do not trouble yourself about it. You need not learn anything from me.——For instance, this morning in the Council have I told you anything new?”

“No, no news——but you spoke quite differently from others.”

“Yes, that is, because my education has been neglected.——I speak at random. But you must tell me why you complied with all the wrong existing in Lebak?”

“I never before had such an impression at an initiation——moreover, all this has always been so in these countries.”

“Yes, yes; I know that very well——every one cannot [149]be a prophet or an apostle—wood would soon be too dear because of the crucifying. But certainly you will help me to make all right: you undoubtedly like to do your duty?”

“To be sure! above all with you. But not every one would claim, or tax it so very severely, and then one gets so easily into the position of a man who fights windmills.”

“No! those who love injustice because they live on it, say that there was no injustice to have the pleasure of railing at you as a Don Quixote, and keep their windmills turning at the same time. But, Verbrugge! you needed not to wait for me to do your duty. Mr. Slotering was a clever and honest man: he knew what happened; he condemned it and opposed it. Look here!”—Havelaar took out of a writing-desk two sheets of paper, and showing them to Verbrugge, he asked—

“Whose handwriting is this?”

“That is the handwriting of Mr. Slotering——”

“Exactly so—well! Here are two rough copies, evidently containing subjects on which he wished to speak to the Resident. Look here:—1. ‘On Rice Culture.’ 2. ‘On the Houses of the Village Chiefs.’ 3. ‘On the Gathering of the Land-taxes!!’ etc. After the last are two points of exclamation——what did Mr. Slotering mean by that?”

“I cannot tell,” said Verbrugge.

“I can. That means that more taxes are paid than [150]flow into the exchequer of the country. But I will show you something which we both know, because it is written in words and not in signs. Look here:—

“ ‘12. On the Abuses practised on the Population by the Regents and the Inferior Chiefs. On the keeping of different Houses at the Cost of the Population, etc.’

“Is that clear? You see that Mr. Slotering was certainly a man who knew how to take the initiative; you could have supported him. Listen:—

“ ‘15. That many persons of the families and servants of the inland chiefs appear on the payment lists, who indeed take no part in the culture; whereby they have advantages to the prejudice of the real participants. They also get unlawfully into possession of rice-fields,——which are only due to those persons who have a share in the culture.’

“Here I have another note written in pencil. Look here, too, we may read something that is very clear:—

“ ‘The emigration of the population at Parang-Koodjang can only be ascribed to the excess of abuses by which the people are victimized.’

“What do you say about that? You see I am not so eccentric as I appear to be, when I mean to do what is right, and that others shall do the same!”

“It is true,” said Verbrugge; “Mr. Slotering often spoke to the Resident about all this.”

“And what was the consequence?” [151]

“The Regent was summoned——and he had an interview with the Resident——”

“Exactly so! and what more?”

“The Regent generally denied all. Then witnesses were called for—nobody dared to bear witness against the Regent.——Mr. Havelaar, these things are very difficult!”

The reader, before he has finished the book, will know as well as Verbrugge why those things were so difficult.

“Mr. Slotering was much offended about this,” continued the Controller; “he wrote sharp letters to the chiefs——”

“I read them last night,” said Havelaar.

“And I often heard him say that, if there were no change, and if the Resident would not act with energy, he should apply direct to the Governor-General. This he also said at the last Council at which he presided.”

“Then he would have done wrong, for the Resident was his superior, whom he ought not to pass over, and why should he? It is not, however, to be supposed that the Resident of Bantam approves of injustice and arbitrary power?”

“Approve——no; but one does not like to accuse a Regent——?”

“I do not like to accuse any one, whosoever it may be; but where it must be done, a Regent as well as anybody else. But accusing is still out of the question, God be praised! To-morrow I shall visit the Regent. I will [152]show him how bad it is to abuse one’s power—above all, where the possessions of poor people are concerned. But in expectation that all will be restored, I will help him in his critical circumstances as much as I can. You understand now why I made the tax-gatherer pay that money immediately. I likewise intend to beg the Government to acquit him of the advance. And to you, Verbrugge, I propose that we perform our duty punctually, so long as possible with leniency, but if must be so, fearlessly. You are an honest man, I know, but you are timid. Say henceforward resolutely how matters stand——advienne que pourra: throw that vagueness away—and now stay to dinner with us: we have Dutch cauliflower—but all is quite plain; for I must be very economical——Come, Max!” And with Max on his shoulder, they entered the inner gallery, where Tine waited for them at the table, which, as Havelaar had said, was very simply provided. Duclari, who came to ask Verbrugge if he meant to be home for dinner, was likewise invited; and if you would like some variation in my story, you must read the next chapter, in which I shall tell you something of what was said at this dinner. [153]

Reader, I would give anything to know exactly how long I could let a heroine float in the air, while I described a castle, without exhausting your patience, and causing you to look wearily aside, before the poor creature reached the earth? If my tale demanded such a caper, I should prudently choose a first storey for my point de départ, and a castle of which but little could be said. Once for all, however, I will make you easy on that head:—Havelaar’s house had no storeys at all, and the heroine of my book,—the lovely, faithful, ansprüchlose Tine, a heroine!—never jumped out of the window.

When I ended the foregoing chapter, with a reference to some variation in the next, it was rather a rhetorical artifice, and to make a good ending, than because I meant that the next chapter should only be valuable as a change. A writer is vain as a——man. Slander his mother, or ridicule the colour of his hair, say that he has an Amsterdam accent, such as no Amsterdammer ever had,—perhaps [154]he will forgive you these things; but never say anything against him as an author——for this he will not forgive. If you don’t think my book a good one, and you happen to meet me, just act as if we were strangers to each other.

No, even such a chapter “for a change” appears to me, through the magnifying-glass of my vanity as an author, to be most important and indispensable; and if you do not read it, and afterwards feel disappointed with my book, I shall not hesitate to tell you that your not reading it was the cause of your inability to appreciate my book, for the chapter you omitted was just the most essential of all——I therefore—for I am a man and an author—should hold every chapter to be essential which you had passed over with unpardonable readerlike levity. I imagine that your wife asks, “What do you think of that book?” And you say, for instance—[horribile auditu to me]—with the pomp of diction peculiar to married men—

“Humph! so-so.—I don’t know yet.”

Well then, barbarian! read on: what is most important is about to commence. And with trembling lips I look at you, and measure the thickness of the turned leaves——and I look on your face for the reflection of that chapter “that is so important.”——“No,” I say, “he has not yet jumped up——embraced somebody in ecstasy——his wife perhaps——” But you read on. It appears to me that [155]he has already had “the important chapter”——you have not jumped up at all, and have embraced nothing——

And fewer and fewer grow the leaves under your right thumb, and my hope for that embrace becomes fainter and fainter:

“Yes, truly, I reckoned on a tear!”

And you have finished the novel to “where they have met each other,” and you say, yawning—[“that is another expression of true eloquence”]—

“Not much——it is such a book as is often written now-a-days!”

But don’t you know, monster, tiger, European reader! don’t you know that you spent an hour in biting my soul as a tooth-pick; in gnawing and chewing the flesh and bone of your species? Man-eater! my soul was in that which you have ruminated on as once eaten grass. That was my heart that you swallowed there as a dainty bit, for I put my heart and my soul into that book: and so many tears fell on that manuscript, and my blood went back from the veins to the heart, as I wrote on, and I gave you all this; and you bought this for a few pence—and you say “Humph!”

The reader understands that I do not speak here about my book.

So that I will only say, that I quote the words of Abraham Blankaart1—— [156]

“Who is that Abraham Blankaart?” asked Louise Rosemeyer, and Fred told her, which gave me much pleasure; for this gave me an opportunity to get up and make an end of the reading—for this evening at least. You know that I am a coffee-broker—[No. 37 Laurier Canal]—and that I live for my profession; you will therefore be able to judge how little pleased I was with the work of Stern. I had hoped it would be about coffee, and he gave us——yes, Heaven knows what! He has already had our attention during three parties, and, what is worse, the Rosemeyers like it. I make a remark, he appeals to Louise. Her approbation, he says, is dearer to him than all the coffee in the world, and moreover, when my heart burns, etc.—[look at that tirade, page so-and-so, or rather don’t look for it at all.] There I am, and don’t know what to do! That parcel of Shawlman’s is a true Trojan horse; even Fred is corrupted by it. He helped Stern, as I perceive, for “Abraham Blankaart” is too Dutch for a German. Both are so very self-sufficient that I am truly perplexed with the matter. Worse still, I made an agreement with Gaafzuiger for the publishing of a book about the Coffee-Auctions. All Holland is waiting for it, and there Stern goes quite another way. Yesterday he said: “Be at your ease; different roads lead to Rome: wait for the end of the introduction”—[is all this only “introduction?”]—[157]“I promise you that all will come down to coffee,—coffee, coffee, and nothing but coffee.” “Think of Horace,” he continued; “has he not said, ‘Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit’——Coffee with something else? And do you not act in the same way, when you put sugar and milk in your cup?” And then I am forced to be silent; not because he is right, but because I and the firm Last and Co., have to take care that old Mr. Stern does not fall into the hands of Busselinck and Waterman, who would serve him very badly, because they are bunglers.

With your permission, reader! I give vent to my feelings, and in order that you, after reading what Stern has written—[have you really read it?]—should not pour out your wrath on an innocent head,—for what man will employ a broker who scolds him for a man-eater?—I take it for granted that you are convinced of my innocence. I cannot exclude young Stern from a share in my book, now that matters have gone so far. Louise Rosemeyer when she comes out of church—[the boys appear to wait for her]—asks if he will come early in the evening to read a good deal about Max Havelaar and Tine.

But as you bought or borrowed the book trusting in the respectable title, which promises something worth reading, I acknowledge your claims to something that is worth your money, and, therefore, I once more write a couple of chapters. You, reader, do not go to the parties of the Rosemeyers; and therefore you are more fortunate [158]than I am, who have to hear all! You are at liberty to pass over the chapters that have a flavour of German excitement, and to read only what has been written by me, who am a respectable man and a coffee-broker.

With surprise I learnt from Stern’s scribbling and Shawlman’s parcel the fact that no coffee is planted in the district of Lebak. That is a great mistake, and I shall consider my pains largely rewarded, if the Government through my book perceives this fault.

From Shawlman’s papers it would appear that the soil in these regions is not fit for coffee-culture; but that is no excuse; and I maintain that it is an unpardonable neglect of the interests of Holland generally, and of the coffee-brokers in particular; yes, of the Javanese, neither to make the ground fit for coffee—[the Javanese have nothing else to do]—or, if they think this impossible, to send the men who live there to other places where the ground is good for coffee.

I never say anything that I have not well considered, and I dare affirm that I here speak with a knowledge of business, because I have maturely considered this matter more than once since I heard Dominé2 Wawelaar’s sermon on the Fast-day3 for the Conversion of the Heathen.

That was on Wednesday evening. You must know that I punctually fulfil my obligations as a father, and that I [159]take the moral education of my children very much to heart. As Fred has during the last few days assumed something in tone and manner which displeases me—[that confounded parcel is the cause of it all]—I have given him a good lecture, and said, “Fred, I am not satisfied with you: I always set you a good example, and you forsake the right path; you are conceited and troublesome; you make verses, and you have kissed Betsy Rosemeyer. The fear of the Lord is the source of all wisdom: therefore you must not kiss the Rosemeyers, and you must not be so conceited. Immorality leads to destruction: read the Scriptures, and mark that Shawlman. He left the ways of the Lord: now he is poor, and dwells in a little garret; that is the consequence of immorality and bad conduct; he wrote improper articles in the Indépendance and let the ‘Aglaja’ fall: such are the consequences of being wise in one’s own eyes. He does not now know what o’clock it is, and his little boy wears knee-breeches. Think that your body is a temple of God, and that your father has always had to work very hard for his bread—[it is the truth]. Raise your eyes upwards, and endeavour to become a respectable broker when I go to Driebergen.4 And consider all those men, who will not listen to good counsel, who trample upon religion and morality, and see yourself in these men. Do not think yourself equal to Stern, whose father is so rich, and who will always have [160]money enough, even if he does not like to become a broker. Only think that wickedness is always punished: look again at that Shawlman, who has no winter overcoat, and who looks like a clown. Pay attention when you are at church, and you must not fidget so much on your bench, as if you were annoyed; and do not wait for girls when the service is over, for that destroys all chance of edification. Do not make Mary laugh when I am reading the Bible at breakfast; all this should not be in a respectable household.

“You have also drawn caricatures on Bastianus’ desk when he was not at the office on account of the gout, which continually plagues him,—this keeps them in the office away from their work; and you may read in the Word of God that such follies end in ruin. This Shawlman did the same when he was young: when a child he beat a Greek on the Wester Market; now he is idle, conceited, and sickly. Do not always make fun with Stern; his father is rich; and do as if you did not see it, when he makes wry faces to the bookkeeper, and when he is busy with verses outside the office. Tell him that he had better write to his father that he likes our Company very much, and that he is so contented here, and that Mary has embroidered slippers for him. Ask him, if he thinks that his father will go to Busselinck and Waterman, and tell him that they are low fellows. Do you see that you will in this way bring him into the right path? you owe [161]this to your fellow-creatures, and all that verse-making is nonsense. Be just and obedient, Fred, and do not pull the maid-servant’s dress when she brings tea into the office; and do not make me ashamed that she spills it; and St. Paul says, that a son must never vex his father. These twenty years I have frequented the Exchange, and I may say, that I am esteemed there at my stall. Therefore listen to my exhortations, Fred; fetch your hat, put on your coat, and go with me to the prayer-meeting: that will do you all the good in the world.”

So I have spoken, and I am convinced that I made some impression, above all because Dominé Wawelaar had for his subject:—The love of God evident in His wrath against unbelievers.—(Samuel’s reproof of Saul: 1 Sam. xv. 33.)

I continually thought, while listening to his sermon, how great is the difference between human wisdom and divine. I have already told you, that in Shawlman’s parcel, there is, amongst much rubbish, a great deal of what appeared to be sound common sense; but of how little significance is this, when compared with such language as that of Parson Wawelaar. And not from his own strength,—for I know Wawelaar, and consider him to be a man of middling capacity—his eloquence is given him by the power that comes from above. This difference was still more obvious, because he hinted at many things, about which Shawlman himself had written; for you have seen, that in his parcel, he speaks much about [162]Javanese and other Pagans—[Fred says that the Javanese are no Pagans; but I call every one who has a wrong faith a Pagan]. From the Dominé’s sermon I got my idea of the unlawful revocation of the coffee-culture at Lebak, about which I shall say more by and by; and because, being an honest man, I am not willing that the reader should receive nothing for his money, I will here communicate some extracts from the sermon, which I consider particularly touching. He had proved in a few words from the above-named text the love of God, and very soon went on to the point in question, viz., the conversion of Javanese, Malay, and other Pagan races, whatever may be their names.

“Such, my beloved! was the vocation of Israel”—[he meant the destruction of the inhabitants of Canaan]—“and such is the vocation of Holland! No, it shall not be said that the light which beams upon us has been put aside under a bushel, nor that we grudgingly communicate the bread of life. Glance at the islands of the Indian Ocean, inhabited by millions and millions of children of the accursed son—and of the rightly accursed son—of the noble, God-serving Noah. There they creep in the disgusting snake-holes of Pagan ignorance, there they bow the black woolly head under the yoke of selfish priests. There they worship God, invoking a false prophet that is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord; and, beloved! as if it were not enough to [163]obey a false prophet, there are even those among them who worship another God, or rather other gods; yes, gods of wood and stone, which they themselves have made in their own image—black, abominable, with flat noses, and devilish. Yes, beloved! tears almost arrest me; for deeper still is the depravity of the race of Ham. There are amongst them, that know no God under any name whatever; who think it sufficient to obey the laws of society; who consider a harvest-song, wherein they express their joy on the success of their labour, as a sufficient thanksgiving to the Supreme Being who made the harvest ripen.

“There are ignorant men, my beloved, who think that it is sufficient to love wife and child, and not to take from their fellow-beings what does not belong to them, and that they may then calmly lay down their heads and sleep! Do you not shiver with horror at this picture? does not your heart shrink when you think of what will be the fate of all those fools as soon as the trumpet shall sound which will summon the dead and separate the faithful from the unfaithful? Do you not hear? Yes, you do hear; for from the text you have perceived that your God is a mighty God, and a God who will inflict vengeance—yes, you hear the breaking bones, and the crackling of the flames in the eternal Gehenna, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth:—there, there they burn and perish not, for the punishment [164]is eternal:—there the flame licks with a never-satisfied tongue the screaming victims of unbelief:—there the worm dies not that gnaws their hearts through and through without destroying them, that there may always remain a heart to gnaw in the breast of the God-forsaken. Look how they strip off the black skin of that unbaptized child, that, scarcely born, was slung away from the breast of its mother into the abyss of eternal damnation——”5

[Now, at this moment a woman fainted away.]

“But, beloved,” continued Dominé W., “God is a God of love. It is not His will that the sinner should perish, but that he should be saved by His mercy in Christ, through faith! And therefore Holland has been selected to save as many as can be saved of these miserable creatures. Therefore He has given power to a country small in extent, but great and strong by the knowledge of God,—power over the inhabitants of those regions, that they may be saved from the torments of hell by the holy, never sufficiently to be praised Gospel. The ships of Holland navigate the great waters, and bring civilisation, religion, Christianity, to the erring Javanese. No, our happy Holland does not desire salvation for itself alone;—we wish to communicate it to the unfortunate creatures on far-off strands, that there lie bound [165]in the fetters of unbelief, superstition, and immorality,—and the contemplation of the duties that rest on us shall be the seventh head of my sermon.” For what preceded was the sixth.

Amongst the obligations which we have to fulfil respecting these poor Pagans were named—

I know that I have given the last statement under No. 1; but he repeated it, and such a superfluity seems to me to be very explicable in the enthusiasm of discourse.

But, reader, did you pay attention to No. 5 (e.)? Now then; that was what put me so much in mind of the Coffee-Auctions and the pretended sterility of the soil of Lebak, that you will not be surprised, on my assuring you, that this matter has not been for a moment out of my thoughts since Wednesday evening. Dominé W. read the reports of the missionaries; nobody can dispute his thorough knowledge of the business. Well then,—when he, with these reports in his hands, and his eyes turned to God, asserts that much labour will be favourable to the conquest of Javanese souls to the kingdom of God, then I may certainly assume that I am not so far from the truth, when I say that Lebak will do very well for coffee-culture; and more still, that the Supreme Being [167]perhaps made the ground unfit for coffee-culture, only in order that by the labour that is necessary to construct another soil there, the population of that province may be made fit for salvation.

I do hope that my book will fall under the King’s eye, and that it may be very soon apparent in enlarged Auctions, how strong a relation there is between the knowledge of God and the well-known interest of all citizens. Look how the simple, humble Wawelaar, without wisdom of men—[the fellow never set foot in the Exchange]—but enlightened by the Gospel, which is a lamp to his path, suddenly gives me, a coffee-broker, a hint which is not only important to all Holland, but whereby I may be able to go perhaps five years earlier to Driebergen, if Fred behaves well—[he was very quiet during the sermon]. Yes, labour, labour, that is my maxim; labour for the Javanese, that is my principle, and my principles are sacred to me.

Is not the Gospel the summum bonum? Is there anything better than salvation? Is it not, therefore, our duty to make sure the salvation of these men? And when labour is necessary for that——I myself have frequented the Exchange for twenty years——can we then refuse labour to the Javanese, when it is necessary for his soul, in order that it may not be tormented hereafter? Selfishness! it would be abominable selfishness if we did not employ all possible efforts to save those poor erring men [168]from the terrible future which Dominé Wawelaar so eloquently described. A lady fainted when he spoke of that black child; perhaps she has a little boy of dark features——such are women!

And should not I insist upon labour,—I, who think from morning till evening only about business? Is not even that book, which Stern makes me dislike so much, a proof how good my intentions are for the welfare of the country, and how I like to sacrifice all for that? And when I have to labour so hard, I who was baptized (in the Amstel Kirk), is it not lawful to exact of the Javanese, who has still to earn his salvation, that he should employ his hands?

When that Society—[I mean No. 5 (e.)]—is formed, I will join it, and endeavour to engage the Rosemeyers to join it too, because the sugar-refiners have also an interest in it, though I do not believe that they are very particular in their ideas,—I mean the Rosemeyers, for they have a Roman Catholic servant. In any case, I shall do my duty. That I promised myself while returning home with Fred from the prayer-meeting. In my house the Lord shall be served, I will take care of that; and with the more zeal, the more I perceive how wisely all has been settled, how good the ways are by which we are conducted to the hand of God, how He wills to preserve us for eternal and temporal life——for that ground at Lebak can be very well fitted for coffee-culture. [169]

Though I spare nobody where principles are concerned, yet I have come to the conclusion that I must act otherwise with Stern than with Fred; and as I foresee that my name—[the firm is Last and Co., but my name is Drystubble—Batavus Drystubble]—will be connected with a book, wherein matters appear that are not in harmony with the respect which every honourable man and broker owes to himself, I conceive it to be my duty to communicate to you how I have endeavoured to bring this young man Stern back to the true path.

I did not speak to him of the Lord, because he is a Lutheran; but I worked on his mind and his honour. See how I did this, and observe how useful a knowledge of mankind is. I heard him say, “auf Ehrenwort,” and asked him what he meant by that?

“Well,” he said, “that I pledge my honour for the truth of what I say.”

“That is much,” I said. “Are you so sure of speaking the truth?” [170]

“Yes,” he replied, “I always speak the truth. When my breast glows * * *” The reader knows the rest.

“That is indeed very noble,” said I, and I made as if I believed it.

But this was a part of the trap that I had prepared for him, to show the young fellow his right place, and to make him understand how great is the distance between a mere beginner—though his father may have a large business—and a broker who has frequented the Exchange for twenty years, but I said it in a manner not to run the risk of seeing old Mr. Stern fall into the hands of Busselinck and Waterman. I was acquainted with the fact that he knows all sorts of verses by heart; and as verses always contain lies, I was quite sure that I should very soon catch him telling lies. It was not long before I did. I sat in the back parlour, and he was in the suite1—for we have a suite; Mary was occupied with knitting, and he was going to tell her something. I listened very attentively, and when he had finished I asked him if he possessed the book containing the story which he had just narrated. He said Yes, and gave it me; it was a volume of one of the works of a certain fellow called Heine.

The following morning I handed to him—Stern, I mean—the following [171]

[177]

So that I will only say, to speak with Abraham Blankaart, that I consider this chapter to be “essential,” because it makes you, in my opinion, better acquainted with Havelaar, and he seems to be the hero of the history. “Tine, what sort of Ketimon (gherkin, cucumber) is this? Never, my dear, give such sour things with fruits; cucumbers with salt, pine-apples with salt, all that comes from the ground with salt. Vinegar with fish and meat … there is something about it in Liebig.…”

“Dear Max,” Tine said, laughing, “how long have we been here? That Ketimon is from Madam Slotering.”

And it seemed difficult for Havelaar to remember that he had arrived only the day before; and that Tine, with the best intentions, had not yet been able to regulate anything in kitchen or household. He had already been a long time at Rankas-Betong! Had not he spent the whole night in reading the archives, and had not too many things already passed through his soul in connexion [178]with Lebak, for him to know so soon that he only arrived there the day before? Tine knew this very well; she always understood.

“Oh yes, that is true,” said he; “but still you may like to read something from Liebig. Verbrugge, have you read much of Liebig?”

“Who was he?” asked Verbrugge.

“An author who wrote much on the preserving of gherkins; he also discovered how to change grass into wool.… You understand?”

“No,” said Verbrugge and Duclari together.

“Well, it had been known for a long time:—send a sheep into the field, and you will see. But it was Liebig who discovered the manner in which it happens. Others, however, say that he knows but little about it: they are now trying to discover the means of dispensing with the sheep altogether.… Oh, those scholars! Molière knew it very well.… I like Molière. If you like, we shall have reading every evening; Tine will also be of the party when Max is in bed.”

Duclari and Verbrugge liked this. Havelaar said that he had not many books, but amongst them he had Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Lamartine, Thiers, Say, Malthus, Scialoja, Smith, Shakespeare, Byron, Vondel.…

Verbrugge said that he was not acquainted with the English language.

“What the deuce! You are more than thirty years of [179]age: what have you been about all this time? But it must have been very disagreeable for you at Padang, where English is so much spoken. Did you know Miss Matta-api (Fire-eye)?”

“No, I do not know the name.”

“It was not her name; we gave her this nickname because her eyes were so brilliant. I think she must be married by this time; it was long ago. I never saw such eyes … except at Arles … you must go there. That is the prettiest place I ever visited in my travels. It seems to me that there is nothing that so well represents beauty in the abstract, as—a beautiful woman—a visible image of true immaterial purity——Believe me, go to Arles and Nîmes.…”

Duclari, Verbrugge, and Tine also, I must confess, could not suppress a loud laugh at the thought of stepping over so unexpectedly from the west of Java to Arles or Nîmes. Havelaar, who, perhaps, had stood on the tower1 built by [180]the Saracens, near the old Roman amphitheatre at Arles, had some difficulty in understanding the cause of this laugh, and then he continued:—

“Well, yes, I mean, when you are in that neighbourhood. I never saw such a thing. I was accustomed to disappointments on seeing things that are generally so loudly extolled. For instance! look at the cataracts we hear so much of;—I felt little or nothing at Tondano, Abaros, Schaffhausen, and Niagara. One requires to look at his hand-book to know the exact measure of his admiration of the ‘so many feet of fall,’ and ‘so many cubic feet of water in a minute,’ and when the figures are high, he says, ‘What!’ I won’t go to see any more cataracts, at least not when I have to make a détour to get at them. They do not tell me anything. Buildings speak louder to me, above all when they are pages out of history; but the feeling which these inspire is quite different; bringing up the past, and making its shadows pass in review before us. Amongst them are abominable ones, and therefore, however interesting they may be, one does not always find in them what satisfies æsthetical tastes. And without reference to history, there is much beauty in some buildings; but this beauty is again corrupted by guides—either in print, or of flesh and blood—who steal away your impression by their monotonous babble. ‘This chapel was erected by the Bishop of Munster in 1423; the pillars are sixty-three feet high, and are supported by.…’ I don’t [181]know what. This is tiresome; for one feels it necessary to have exactly sixty-three feet of admiration at hand not to be taken for a Turk or a bagman. You will tell me now, perhaps, that you keep your guide, when a printed one, in your pocket, and in the other case, order him to hold his tongue, or stand outside; but sometimes to arrive at a correct judgment, information is wanted; yet even if that could be dispensed with, we might seek in vain in some building or other for anything to gratify for more than a moment our passion for the beautiful, because there is nothing to move us. This also holds good, in my opinion, of sculpture and paintings. Nature is motion. Growth, hunger, thought, feeling, all these are examples of motion.… Stagnancy is death. Without motion there is no grief, no enjoyment, no emotion. Sit there motionless for a while, and you will see how soon you will make a ghostly impression on every one else, and even on your own imagination. At a tableaux vivants, one soon wants a new figure, however impressive the sight may have been at the commencement. As our taste for beauty is not satisfied with one look at anything beautiful, but needs a good many successive looks to watch the motion of the beautiful, we are dissatisfied when contemplating works of art, and therefore I assert that a beautiful woman, provided her beauty is not too still, comes nearest to the ideal of the divinity.

“How great is the necessity for motion that I speak of, [182]you can partly realize from the loathing which a dancer causes you, even if an Elssler or a Taglioni, when she having just finished a dance, stands on her left foot, and grins at the public.”

“That is beside the question,” Verbrugge said; “for it is absolutely ugly.”

“That is just my opinion; but she fancies it beautiful, and as a climax to all the previous performance, in which much beauty may have been displayed. She regards it as the point of the epigram, as the ‘aux armes!’ of the Marseillaise which she sang with her feet; or as the murmuring of the willows on the grave of the love represented in the dance. And that spectators, who generally, like us, found their taste more or less on custom and imitation, think that moment to be the most striking is evident, because just then every one explodes in applause, as if they said, ‘All the former was beautiful, but now we cannot refrain from giving vent to our feelings of admiration.’ You said that these pauses were absolutely ugly, so do I; but what is the reason? It is because motion was at an end, and with that the history which the dancer told. Believe me, stagnation is death.”

“But,” interrupted Duclari, “you also rejected as an exponent of beauty, the cataracts … yet they move.…”

“Yes, but without a history. They move; but do not change their place. They move like a rocking-horse, [183]minus the ‘to and fro.’ They make a noise, but don’t speak.… They cry ‘rroo … rroo … rroo!’… Try crying ‘rroo, rroo’ … for six thousand years, or more, and you will see how few persons will think you an amusing man.”

“I shall not try it,” said Duclari; “but still I do not agree with you, that this motion is so strictly necessary. I give up the cataracts;—but a good picture can express much, I should think.”

“To be sure, but only for a moment. I will try to explain my meaning by an example. This is the 8th of February.…”

“Certainly not,” said Verbrugge, “we are still in January.…”

“No, no; it is the 8th of February 1587, and you are shut up in the Castle of Fotheringay.”

“I?” asked Duclari, who thought that he had not quite understood the remark.

“Yes, you. You are weary, and try to get some variation. There in that wall is a hole;—it is too high for you to look through, but still that is what you desire to do. You place your table under it, and upon this table a three-legged stool, one of the legs being decidedly weak. You have seen at a fair an acrobat, who piled seven chairs one above another, and then placed himself on the top with his head downwards. Self-love and weariness press you to do something of the kind. You climb on your chair, [184]and reach the object.… You look for one moment through the hole.… ‘Oh, dear!’ You fall.… And don’t you now know why?”

“I think that the weak leg of the stool broke down,” said Verbrugge.

“Yes; that leg broke down,—but that is not the reason why you fell, the leg broke after your fall. Before every other hole, you could have stood a year on that chair, but now you would have fallen even if there had been thirteen legs to the stool. Yes, even had you been standing on the ground.…”

“I take it for granted,” said Duclari. “I see that you intend to let me fall, coûte que coûte. I lie flat enough now, and at full length; but really I don’t know why.”

“Well; that is very simple … you saw there a woman, dressed in black, kneeling down before a block. She bowed her head, and white as silver was the neck, which appeared whiter from its contrast with the velvet … and there stood a man with a large sword;2 and he held it high, and he looked at this white neck … and he considered the arc which his blade must describe, to be driven through just there … there between those joints with exactness and force——and then you fell, Duclari; you fell because you saw that, and, therefore, you cried: ‘Oh, dear!’ and not because your chair had only three legs. [185]

“And long after you have been delivered from Fotheringay through the intercession of your cousin, or because they have grown tired of feeding you there any longer like a canary, long afterwards, yes, even now, your day-dreams are of this woman; you are roused from sleep, and fall down with a heavy shock on your bed, because you want to arrest the arm of the executioner!… Is it not so?”

“I am willing to believe it, but I cannot say very decidedly, because I have never looked through a hole in the wall of Fotheringay.”

“Granted! nor have I. But now I take a picture, which represents the decapitation of Mary Stuart. Suppose the representation to be perfect: there it hangs in a gilt frame, suspended by a red cord, if you like.… I know what you are about to say,—‘Granted!’ No! you do not see the frame; you even forget that you left your walking-stick at the entrance of the picture-gallery; you forget your name, your child, the new model shako, not to see a picture, but to behold in reality Mary Stuart, exactly the same as at Fotheringay. The executioner stands there exactly the same as he must have been standing in reality; yes, I will even suppose that you extend your arm to avert the blow, that you even cry, ‘Let this woman live, perhaps she will amend.’… You see, I give you fair play as regards the execution of the picture.”

“Yes, but what more? Is the impression then not [186]exactly the same as when I saw the same in reality at Fotheringay?”

“No, not in the least, because you did not climb on a chair with three legs. This time you take a chair,—with four legs, by preference an easy-chair,—you go and sit down before the picture, in order to enjoy it completely and for a long time—[We do enjoy ourselves in seeing anything dismal!]—and what is the impression which it makes on you?”

“Well, dread, anguish, pity, trouble!… just the same as when I looked through the hole in the wall. You supposed the picture to be perfect, so I must have the same impression from it as from the reality.”

“No, within two minutes you feel pain in your right arm out of sympathy with the executioner, who has to hold up so long that blade of steel.…”

“Sympathy with the executioner?”

“Yes; an equal sense of pain and discomfort … and also with the woman who sits there so long in an uncomfortable position, and probably in an uncomfortable state of mind, before the block. You still sympathize with her; but this time not because she had to wait so long before being decapitated——and if you had anything to say or to cry,—suppose that you felt disposed to trouble yourself with the matter,—it would be nothing else than, ‘Give the blow, man, she is waiting for it!’ And if afterwards you look again at that picture, and look often at it, is [187]your first impression that it is not yet done? ‘Is he still standing and she lying?’ ”

“But what motion is there then in the beauty of the women at Arles?” asked Verbrugge.

“Oh, that is quite different! In their features you may read a whole history.3 Carthage flourishes, and builds ships: you hear Hannibal’s oath against Rome … here they twist cords for their bows … there the city burns.…”

“Max! Max! I believe that you left your heart at Arles,” said Tine.

“Yes, for a moment … but I have got it back again: you shall hear it. Observe, I do not say I saw a woman there who was in this or that respect beautiful—no, they were all beautiful, and so it was impossible there to fall in love, because the next person always drove the preceding from your admiration, and really I thought of Caligula or Tiberius,—of which of them do they tell the story?—who wished that all humankind had but one head … now therefore involuntarily I wished that the women of Arles.…”

“Had but one head together?”

“Yes.”

“To knock it off?”

“Certainly not … but to kiss it, I was going to say; [188]it is not that.… No, to look at it, to dream of it, and to … be good!”

Duclari and Verbrugge certainly thought this conclusion very strange.

But Max did not notice it, and continued:—

“For so noble were the features that one felt somewhat ashamed to be only a man, and not a spark … a beam … no, that would be substance … a thought.…. But——suddenly a brother or a father sat down beside these women, … goodness! I saw one blow her nose!”

“I knew that you would draw a black stripe across it,” said Tine.

“Is that my fault? I would rather have seen her fall down dead;——

“Ought such a girl so far to forget herself?”

“But, Mr. Havelaar,” asked Verbrugge, “suppose she had a bad cold?”

“Well, she ought not to have a bad cold with such a nose.…”

As if an evil spirit spoke, Tine suddenly sneezed … and before she thought of it, she had blown her nose!

“Dear Max! don’t be angry!” said she, with a suppressed laugh.

He did not reply; and however foolish it seems, or is,—yes, he was angry. And what sounds strange too, Tine was glad that he was angry, and that he required her to [189]be more than the women of Arles, even though she had no reason to be proud of her nose.

If Duclari still thought Havelaar a fool, one could not be surprised if he felt himself strengthened in this opinion, on perceiving the short anger that could be read in Havelaar’s face, after that nose-blowing. But he had returned from Carthage, and he read on the faces of his guests, with the rapidity with which he could read, when his mind was not too far away from home, that they had made the two following theorems:—

“1. Whoever will not let his wife blow her nose is a fool.

“2. Whoever thinks that a beautiful nose may not be blown, is wrong to apply that idea to Madam Havelaar, whose nose is a little en pomme de terre.”

Havelaar would not speak of the first theorem, but the second one.…—“Oh,” he said, as if he had to reply, though his guests had been too polite to speak their thoughts, “I will explain that to you, Tine.…”

“Dear Max!” she said entreatingly; and she meant by these words to say, “Do not tell these gentlemen why I should be in your estimation elevated above a bad cold.…”

Havelaar appeared to understand what Tine meant; for he replied, “Very well, dear.” But do you know, gentlemen, that one is often deceived in estimating the rights of men by material imperfections? I am quite sure that his guests never heard of these rights.

“I knew a little girl in Sumatra,” he continued, “the [190]daughter of a datoo4 … well then, I am certain that she had no claim to such imperfection; and yet I saw her fall into the water in a shipwreck just like another. I, a man, had to help her to land.”

“But ought she to have flown like a sea-mew?”

“Certainly, … or, no … she ought not to have had a body. Would you have me tell you how I became acquainted with her? It was in ’42, I was Controller at Natal.5 Have you been there, Verbrugge?”

“Yes.”

“Now then, then you know that pepper is cultivated at Natal. The pepper-grounds are situated at Taloh-Baleh, north of Natal, near the coast. I had to inspect them, and having no knowledge of pepper, I took with me in the pirogue6 (prakoe) a datoo—some one who knew more about it than I. His daughter, then a child of thirteen years, went with us. We sailed along the coast and found it very wearisome.”

“And then you were shipwrecked?”

“No, it was fine weather … the shipwreck happened many years afterwards; otherwise I should not have been weary. We sailed along the coast, and it was fearfully hot. Such a pirogue gives little occasion for relaxation, and, moreover, I was then in a very bad humour, to which [191]many causes had contributed. First of all, I had an unfortunate love,—that was in those days my daily bread;—but, moreover, I found myself in a state between two attacks of ambition. I had made myself a king, and been dethroned, I had climbed up a tower, and had fallen down again to the ground.… I shall now pass by the reason of this. Enough, I was sitting there in that pirogue with a sour face and a bad humour; I was, as the Germans call it, ungeniessbar. I thought it derogatory to inspect pepper-fields, and that I ought a long time ago to have had the appointment of governor of a solar system. Moreover, I thought it moral murder to put a spirit like mine in a pirogue with that stupid datoo and his child. I have to tell you that generally speaking I liked the Malay chiefs very much, and harmonized well with them. They even possess qualities which make me prefer them to the Javanese grandees. Yes, I know, Verbrugge, that you do not agree with me in this matter, there are but few who do … but I leave this question now. If I had performed this voyage on another day, when less restless, I should perhaps immediately have commenced a conversation with this datoo, and perhaps have found that it was worth my while. Perhaps the little girl would have spoken too, and that would have entertained me; for a child has generally something original,—though I was still myself too much a child to take an interest in originality. Now this is otherwise; now I see in every girl of thirteen [192]years old a manuscript, in which little or nothing has been effaced. They surprise the author en négligé, and that is often pretty.

“The child was stringing coral beads, and this seemed to absorb all her attention. Three red, one black … three red, one black … it was pretty!

“Her name was ‘Si Oepi Keteh.’ This means in Sumatra about the same as ‘little miss.’… Yes, Verbrugge, you know it, but Duclari has always served in Java. Her name was ‘Si Oepi Keteh,’ but in my thoughts I called her ‘poor creature,’ because I was exalted in my own ideas so very much above her.

“It was afternoon … almost evening; the corals were laid aside. The land passed slowly by, and grew fainter and fainter behind us. To the left, far in the west, above the wide, wide ocean, which has no limit as far as Madagascar—the sun set over Africa, and his beams fell—more and more obliquely on the waves, and sought for coolness in the sea. What the dickens is it?”

“What? the sun?”

“No, no.… I used to make verses.…

“I don’t know the rest!”

“You could ascertain it,” said Verbrugge, “by writing to Krijgsman, who was your clerk at Natal; he knows it.”

“How did he get hold of it?” asked Max.

“Perhaps out of your waste-basket. But certain it is [194]that he has it. Does not then follow the story of the fall of man, which made the island sink, that formerly protected Natal’s coast … the history of Djiwa and the two brothers?”

“That is true. This legend—was no legend at all, it was a parable which I made, and which two hundred years hence——will be a legend if Krijgsman often relates it. Such has been the origin of all legends. Djiwa is ‘soul’ as you know.…”

“Max, what became of the little girl with the coral beads?” asked Tine.

“They had been laid aside. It was six o’clock, and there under the equator—Natal being a few minutes north of it [when I went on horseback to Ayer-Bangie, I made my horse walk over the equator, or almost walk; fearing I should fall over it]—it was six o’clock, a signal for evening thoughts. Now, I think that a man in the evening is always a little better, or less vicious, than in the morning—and that is natural. A Controller wipes his eyes, and dreads meeting an Assistant Resident, who assumes a foolish ascendency because he has been a few years more in the service; or has to measure fields that day, and is in doubt between his honesty——you do not know that, Duclari, because you are a military man; but there are indeed honest Controllers——then he is in doubt between that honesty and the fear that Radeen Demang So-and-so will desire to have that grey horse that ambles [195]so well;—or, he has to say that day Yes or No in answer to letter N^o——. In a word, when you awake in the morning, the world falls on your heart; and that is a heavy burden for a heart, even when it is strong.

“But when it is evening you pause. There are ten hours; thirty-six thousand seconds before you will see your official coat again. That allures every one. That is the moment when I hope to die … to arrive yonder with an unofficial face. That is the moment when your wife finds something once more in your face of what caught her when she allowed you to keep that pocket-handkerchief with an ‘E’ in the corner.…”

“And before she had time to catch a bad cold.”

“Ah, don’t disturb me … I only mean to say, that during the evening one is more susceptible (gemüthlicher). So when the sun set, I became a better man, as the first proof of my improvement may show, and said to the little girl—

“ ‘Now it will soon be cooler.’

“ ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.

“But I lowered my dignity still further, and commenced a conversation with this poor creature. My merits were still greater, because she replied little. I was right in all that I said; which is annoying, even in spite of one’s arrogance.

“ ‘Should you like to go again to Taloh-Baleh?’ I asked. [196]

“ ‘As you please, sir.’

“ ‘No, I ask you if you think such an excursion agreeable?’

“ ‘If my father does,’ she replied.—Was not this enough to anger me? Well, then, I did not get angry, the sun had set, and I felt myself good (gemüthlich) enough not to be disheartened by so much stupidity; or rather, I believe, I began to enjoy hearing my own voice,—for few amongst us do not like to listen to their own voices,—and after my muteness during the whole day, I thought, now that I did speak, it merited something better than the silly replies of ‘Si Oepi Keteh.’

“I will tell her something, I thought, then I shall hear it too, without wanting any replies. Now you know that, as at the unloading of a ship, the ‘Kranjang’ (cask) of sugar last put on board is the first to be taken out, so we generally unload first that thought or tale that was acquired last. In the periodical paper, ‘Dutch India,’ I had read not long before a story by Jerome, ‘The Japanese Stone-Cutter.’… This Jerome has written many beautiful things. Did you read his ‘Auction in the House of the Dead’? And his ‘Tombs’? And, above all, the ‘Pedatti’? I will give you the last. I had just read ‘The Japanese Stone-Cutter.’… Now I suddenly remember that my anger that day was connected with the perilousness of the Natal roads.… You know, Verbrugge, that no man-of-war can approach these roads, [197]certainly not in July.… Yes, Duclari, the rainy season is there at its height in July, quite different from here … now then, the perilousness of these roads was linked with my mortified ambition. I had often proposed to the Resident to construct at Natal a breakwater, or at least an artificial harbour at the mouth of the river, with a view to bring commerce into the district of Natal, which unites the battah districts with the sea. One million and a half of inhabitants in the interior do not know what to do with their produce, because the Natal roads are so bad. Now then, these proposals had not been approved by the Resident, or at least he asserted that the Government would not approve of them, and you know that the Residents never propose anything but what they know pretty well beforehand will be agreeable to the Government. The making of a harbour at Natal was in principle contradictory of the separate system; and far from encouraging ships there, it was even forbidden to admit ships with yards on the roads, unless in case of superior force. Yet when a ship came—they were mostly American whalers, or French ships that had loaded pepper in the small independent countries on the north side—I always caused a letter to be written by the captain, wherein he asked permission to take in fresh water. My anger about the miscarriage of my efforts to do something for the benefit of Natal, or rather my offended vanity at being still of so little consequence that I could not even have a harbour [198]made where I liked, and all this in connexion with my candidateship for the ruling of a solar system,—all this made me so peevish that day. When I recovered a little at sunset, for discontent is a sickness exactly,—this sickness reminded me of the Japanese stone-cutter, and perhaps I only thought this history aloud, in order to take the last drop of the medicine which I felt that I wanted, whilst I imposed upon myself by saying that I did it out of benevolence for the child. But she, the child, cured me, for some days at least, better than any tale.

“Oepi! There was a man who cut stones out of a rock. This labour was heavy, and he laboured much; but his wages were small, and he was not content. He sighed because his labour was heavy, and he cried, ‘O that I were rich, in order to rest on a baleh-baleh7 with klamboo.’8

“And there came an angel out of heaven, who said, ‘Be it as you have said.’

“And he was rich. And he rested on a baleh-baleh, and the klamboo was of red silk.

“And the king of the country passed with horsemen before his carriage, and likewise behind the carriage there were horsemen, and the golden pajong9 was held over the head of the king. [199]

“And as soon as the rich man heard this, he was sad, because they held no golden ‘pajong’ over his head, and he was not content. He sighed and cried, ‘I should like to be a king.’

“And there came an angel out of heaven and said, ‘Be it as you have said.’

“And he became a king. And before his carriage were many horsemen, and behind were also horsemen, and over his head they held the golden ‘pajong.’

“And the sun shone with hot beams, and burned the earth in such a manner that the grass was dried up.

“And the king complained that the sun burned his face, and had more power than he; and he was not satisfied.

“He sighed, and cried, ‘I should like to be the sun.’

“And there came an angel out of heaven who said, ‘Be it as you have said.’

“And he became the sun. And he sent up his beams on high, and down to the earth; to the right and to the left——everywhere.

“And he burned up the grass on the earth, and the faces of the princes who were on the earth.

“And a cloud came between him and the earth, and the beams of the sun were turned back.

“And he was angry that his power was resisted; and he complained that this cloud had more power than he; and he was dissatisfied.

“He desired to be the cloud that was so mighty. [200]

“And there came an angel from heaven who said, ‘Be this as you have said.’

“And he became a cloud, and placed himself between the sun and the earth, and intercepted the beams, so that the grass became green.

“And the cloud rained in large drops on the earth, and made the rivers swell, and the ‘banjers’ carried away the herds.

“And the cloud devastated the field with much water.

“And it fell on a rock which did not move, and rattled in large streams, but the rock did not yield.

“And the cloud was angry because the rock would not yield; and because the strength of its streams was vain. And it was not contented.

“It cried, ‘This rock has more power than I have. I wish to be this rock.’

“And there came an angel out of heaven who said, ‘Be this as you have said.’

“And it became a rock, and moved neither when the sun shone nor when it rained.

“And there came a man with pickaxe and sharp chisel, and heavy hammer, who cut stones out of the rock.

“And the rock said, ‘What is this, that the man has power over me, and cuts stones out of my bosom?’ And it was discontented.

“It cried, ‘I am weaker than he, I should like to be that man.’ [201]

“And there came an angel out of heaven who said, ‘Be this as you have said.’

“And he became a stone-cutter. And he cut stones out of the rock with heavy labour, and he laboured hard for small wages, and was contented.”

“Very nice,” said Duclari, “but now you still owe us the proof that this little ‘Oepi’ ought to have been imponderable.”

“No, I did not promise to prove that. I only desired to tell you how I got acquainted with her. When I had done with my story, I asked: ‘And you, “Oepi,” what would you choose, if an angel from heaven came to ask you what you desired?’ ”

“Sir, I should pray him to take me with him to heaven.”

“Is not that beautiful?” said Tine to her guests, who perhaps thought it very foolish.

Havelaar stood upon his legs, and wiped away something from his forehead. [202]

“Dear Max,” said Tine, “our dessert is so scanty——would you not——you remember Madam Geoffrin——?”

“Talk to us of something else than pastry? What the deuce! I am hoarse; it is Verbrugge’s turn.”

“Yes, Mr. Verbrugge! Please relieve Max,” said Madam Havelaar. Verbrugge hesitated for a moment; and began:

“Once upon a time there was a man, who stole a turkey.”

“Oh you rogue,” cried Havelaar, “that is from Padang! And how does it go on?”

“It is finished. Do you know the end of this story?”

“To be sure, I ate the turkey in company with … somebody. Do you know why I was suspended at Padang?”

“People said that there was a deficit in your cash at Natal,” replied Verbrugge.

“That is not altogether untrue, but neither is it true. From many causes I had been very careless in my pecuniary [203]responsibilities at Natal, on which many observations were made. But this happened in those days very often: matters in Northern Sumatra were, soon after the pacification of Baros, Tapos, and Singkel,1 so confused, all was so turbulent, that fault could not be found with a young man who was more inclined to be on horseback than at the desk, or in keeping cash-books in order. It could not be expected that everything would be in such strict order as if an Amsterdam bookkeeper had been in charge with nothing else to do. The Battah-countries were in revolt, and you know, Verbrugge, how all that happens there reacts on Natal. I slept every night in my clothes, to be ready for anything: which was often necessary. Moreover there was danger,—a few days before my arrival a plot had been discovered to revolt and murder my predecessor, and danger has something attractive, above all to a man of twenty-two, and this attractiveness makes him the more incapable for office-work, or the stiff accuracy which is wanted for the proper management of money matters. Moreover, I had all sorts of nonsense in my head.…”

“It is not necessary,” said Madam Havelaar in reply to a man-servant. [204]

“What is not necessary?”

“I had told them to make something ready in the kitchen——an omelet—or some such thing.”

“Ah!… and that is not necessary, because I have begun my story—that is naughty, Tine. Very well, as far as I am concerned; but these gentlemen have also a voice in the matter. Verbrugge! what do you like?—your share of the omelet or the story?”

“That is a difficult choice for a polite man,” said Verbrugge.

“Nor should I like to choose,” added Duclari, “for it would be a verdict between man and wife; and——”

“Entre l’écorce et le bois, il ne faut pas mettre le doigt.”

“I will help you, gentlemen, the omelet is.…”

“Madam,” said the courteous Duclari, “the omelet will certainly be worth as much.…”

“As the story? Certainly, if it is worth anything; but there is a difficulty.…”

“I wager that there is no sugar in the house,” said Verbrugge; “pray fetch from mine whatever you want.”

“There is sugar, from Madam Slotering; no, it is not that. If the omelet were good, that would not matter.…”

“What then, Madam; has it fallen into the fire?”

“I wish it had. No, it cannot fall into the fire; it is.…”

“But, Tine,” said Havelaar, “what is it then?”

“It is imponderable, Max! as your women at Arles [205]… ought to have been. I have no omelet——I have nothing more.”

“Then, for heaven’s sake, the story,” said Duclari in droll despair.

“But we have coffee,” cried Tine.

“Good! Then we shall drink coffee in the fore-gallery,2 and let us invite Madam Slotering and the girls,” said Havelaar, whereupon the small company moved.

“I suppose that she will not come, Max; you know that she prefers not to dine with us, and in this I cannot say that she is wrong.”

“She may have heard that I tell stories,” said Havelaar, “and that must have frightened her.”

“You are wrong there, Max! This would not harm her—she doesn’t understand Dutch. No, she told me that she wished to have her own household; and I understand that very well. You know how you translated my name—‘E. H. v. W.’ ”

“Eigen Haard veel Waard.”3

“Just so: she is quite right; she seems, moreover, a little unsociable. Only fancy, she makes the servants drive away all strangers that come near the house.…”

“I beg for the story or the omelet,” said Duclari. [206]

“So do I,” cried Verbrugge; “evasions are not accepted. We are entitled to a complete dinner, and therefore I ask for the history of the turkey.”

“I have told you that already,” said Havelaar: “I stole the turkey from General van Damme, and ate it with somebody.”

“Before something went to heaven,” said Tine playfully.

“No, that’s an evasion,” cried Duclari, “we want to know why you stole that turkey.”

“Well, because I was hungry, and that was the fault of General van Damme, who had suspended me.”

“If you don’t tell me more than that, I will bring an omelet next time myself,” complained Verbrugge.

“Believe me, it was nothing more than that. He had many turkeys, and I had none. These birds were driven before my door; I took one, and said to the man who imagined that he watched them, ‘Tell the General that I, Max Havelaar, take this turkey, because I want to eat it.’ ”

“And what about that epigram?”

“Did Verbrugge speak to you about it?”

“Yes.”

“That has nothing to do with the turkey. That was because he had suspended so many functionaries: there were at Padang seven or eight of them whom he had suspended, with more or less justice, from their functions. Many amongst them deserved it less than I. The Assistant Resident of Padang himself had been suspended, and [207]for a reason which, as I believe, was quite a different one from that given in the decision. I must tell you, however, that I cannot assure you that I know all about it, and that I say only what was thought to be true at Padang, and what may have been true, when taking into consideration above all the peculiarities of the General.

“He married his wife to gain a wager of an anker of wine. He often went out in the evening, and went everywhere. Mr. Valkenaar on one occasion so respected his incognito, that in a small street near the girls’ orphan-house, he gave him a thrashing, as a common disturber of the public peace. Not far from that place lived Miss ——. There was a rumour that this Miss —— had given birth to a child, that had disappeared. The Assistant Resident was about to examine into the matter, and seems to have expressed his intention at a whist-party at the General’s. The next day he received an order to go to a certain district, whose Controller had been suspended from his functions because of true or supposed dishonesty, there to examine and report upon these affairs. The Assistant Resident certainly wondered that he was charged with a thing that had no connexion whatever with his district; but as he could, strictly speaking, consider this charge as an honourable distinction, and as he was on very good terms with the General, so that he had no cause to think of a snare, he acquiesced in the mission, and went to —— I don’t know where, to execute his orders. After some [208]time he returns and makes a report, that was not unfavourable to the Controller. But lo! the public (that is, ‘nobody and every one’) at Padang had now discovered that the Controller had only been suspended to afford an opportunity for the removal of the Assistant Resident from the place, in order to prevent his intended investigation of the disappearance of that child, or at least to delay it till it would be more difficult to clear up the mystery. I now repeat that I do not know whether that was true, but since my better acquaintance with General van Damme, it appears to me very credible; and at Padang likewise there was nobody who did not think him capable of such a thing, considering how very bad his morals were. Most people only gave him credit for one quality, intrepidity in danger; and if I, who have seen him in danger, stuck to the opinion that he was, after all, a courageous man, that alone would induce me to withhold this story. It is true that he, in Sumatra, had caused many ‘to be sabred down,’ but that ought to have been seen more closely, to form a correct estimate of his valour; and, however strange it may appear, I believed that he owed his military glory in a great measure to the spirit of contradiction which animates us all more or less. One readily admits, it is true, that Peter or Paul is this, or that; but what he is, that one must leave him, and never can you be so sure to be praised as when you have a great, a very apparent fault. You, Verbrugge, are drunk every day.…” [209]

“I?” asked Verbrugge, who was a pattern of temperance.

“Yes, I make you drunk every day. You forget yourself so far that Duclari tumbles over you in the fore-gallery. That he will find unpleasant, but he will immediately remember to have seen something good in you, which he did not remark before. And when I come, and I find you thus horizontal, then he will put his hand on my arm and say, ‘Oh, believe me, he is otherwise such a good, honest, nice fellow!’ ”

“I say that of Verbrugge, even when he is vertical,” said Duclari.

“Not with the same fire and persuasion. Think of it, how often one hears people say, ‘Oh, if this man would be attentive to his business, he would be somebody, but——’ and then comes the story, how that he is not attentive to business, and is, therefore, nobody. I believe that I know the reason of this. Of those that are dead we always hear good qualities which we never before perceived. This is because they are in nobody’s way. All men are more or less concurrents; we should like to place everybody else completely under us, and to have all things under us. Politeness, even self-interest, prevents the confession of this, for very soon nobody would believe us, even if we asserted something true. A subterfuge is sought for, and look how we do it. When you, Duclari, say, ‘Lieutenant Slobkous is a good soldier, to be sure he is a good soldier, [210]I cannot sufficiently express what a good soldier Lieutenant Slobkous is, … but he is no theorist …’ did you not say so, Duclari?”