Max Havelaar 1732 Studios

Dutch · The Novel

Hoofdstuk 7

Chapter 7

210 sentences · 311 notes

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  1. 1

    CHAPTER SEVEN

    ZEVENDEseventhzevende · ordinal numeral, attributivemodifies hoofdstuk
    HOOFDSTUKchapterhoofdstuk · noun, neuter, singularhead of the title
  2. 2

    The Resident of Bantam presented the Regent and the Controller to the new Assistant Resident.

  3. 3

    Havelaar greeted both officials courteously. The Controller—there is always something awkward in meeting a new chief—he set at ease with a few friendly words, as though wishing to introduce at once a kind of familiarity that would make their dealings easy.

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    His meeting with the Regent was such as befitted a person who carries the golden pajong but who was, at the same time, to be his "younger brother."

  5. 5

    With dignified cordiality he chided him for his over-eager zeal in his duties, which in such weather had carried him all the way to the boundaries of his district—something the Regent, strictly speaking and by the rules of etiquette, had not been obliged to do.

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    "Truly, Mr. Adhipatti, I am vexed with you that you have taken so much trouble on my account!

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    I had thought to find you first at Rangkas-Betoeng." "I wished to see the Assistant Resident as soon as possible, to seal a friendship," said the Adhipatti.

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    "Certainly, certainly, I feel myself greatly honored!

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    But I do not like to see anyone of your rank and your years exert himself overmuch.

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    And on horseback, no less!"

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    "Yes, Mr. Assistant Resident!

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    Wherever duty calls me, I am still nimble and strong." "This is asking too much of yourself!

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    Is it not so, Resident?"

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    "The Adhipatti.

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    Is.

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    Very."

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    "Good, but there is a limit."

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    "Zealous," the Resident dragged out after him.

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    "Good, but there is a limit," Havelaar had to say once more, as if to swallow back what had gone before. "If you think well of it, Resident, let us make room in the carriage.

  20. 20

    The baboe can stay here; we will send her a tandoe from Rangkas-Betoeng.

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    My wife will take Max on her lap ... is it not so, Tine? And then there is room enough.

  22. 22

    "It. Is.

  23. 23

    To. Me." "Verbrugge, we will give you passage too; I do not see why ..."

  24. 24

    "Well!" said the Resident.

  25. 25

    "I do not see why you should clatter on horseback through the mud without need ... there is room enough for us all. We can then make one another's acquaintance straightaway.

  26. 26

    Is it not so, Tine, we will manage well enough? Here, Max ... just look, Verbrugge, is that not a fine little fellow?

  27. 27

    That is my little boy ... that is Max!"

  28. 28

    The Resident had taken his seat with the Adhipatti in the pendoppo. Havelaar called Verbrugge over to ask him whose was that gray horse with the red saddlecloth.

  29. 29

    And when Verbrugge stepped to the entrance of the pendoppo to see which horse he meant, Havelaar laid his hand on his shoulder and asked:

  30. 30

    "Is the Regent always so zealous in his duties?"

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    "He is a vigorous man for his years, Mr. Havelaar, and you understand that he would gladly make a good impression on you."

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    "Yes, that I understand.

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    I have heard much good of him ... he is cultivated, is he not?"

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    "Oh, yes ...

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    And he has a large family?"

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    Verbrugge looked at Havelaar as if he did not grasp the transition.

  37. 37

    And indeed this was, for anyone who did not know him, often difficult.

  38. 38

    The quickness of his mind made him, in conversation, skip over several links in the chain of reasoning more than once; and however gradually this transition took place in his thoughts, it was still not to be held against someone less quick, or unaccustomed to his quickness, if on such an occasion they stared at him with the unspoken question on their lips: are you mad ... or what is it?

  39. 39

    Something of the sort showed in Verbrugge's features just then, and Havelaar had to repeat the question before he answered:

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    "Yes, he has a very extensive family."

  41. 41

    "And are there Medjiets being built in the district?" Havelaar went on, again in a tone that, wholly at odds with the words themselves, seemed to suggest there was a connection between those mosques and the Regent's "large family."

  42. 42

    Verbrugge answered that there was, in fact, a good deal of work being done on the mosques.

  43. 43

    "Yes, yes, that I knew well!" cried Havelaar. "And now tell me, are the land-rents much in arrears?"

  44. 44

    "Well, that could stand to be better ..."

  45. 45

    "Just so, and above all in the district of Parang-Koedjang," said Havelaar, as if he found it easier to answer for himself.

  46. 46

    "How high is this year's assessment?" he continued, and, noticing that Verbrugge hesitated somewhat, as if to collect himself for the answer, Havelaar forestalled him, going on without pause:

  47. 47

    "Good, good, I know it already ... eighty-six thousand and a few hundred ... fifteen thousand more than in the previous year ... but only six thousand above '45. Since '43 we have advanced only eight thousand ... and the population, too, is very sparse ... well, yes, Malthus!

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    In twelve years we have risen by only eleven percent, and even this is in question, for the earlier counts were very inaccurate ... and even so! From '50 to '51 there is actually a decline.

  49. 49

    The livestock, too, is not advancing ... that is a bad sign, Verbrugge! What the deuce, just look at that horse rear—I believe it has the staggers ... come and look, Max!"

  50. 50

    Verbrugge perceived that he would have little to teach the new Assistant Resident, and that there was no question of an advantage from "local seniority"—which the good fellow had not, in any case, coveted.

  51. 51

    "But it is only natural," Havelaar went on, while he took Max in his arms.

  52. 52

    "In the Tjikandi and Bolang districts they are very glad of it ... and so are the rebels in the Lampongs. I commend myself warmly to your cooperation, Mr. Verbrugge!

  53. 53

    The Regent is a man of years, and so we must ... tell me, is his son-in-law still district chief? All things considered, I take him for a person who deserves forbearance ... the Regent, I mean.

  54. 54

    I am very glad that everything here is so backward and impoverished, and ... I hope to stay here a long time."

  55. 55

    At this he reached out his hand to Verbrugge, and the latter, returning with him toward the table where the Resident, the Adhipatti, and Mrs. Havelaar were seated, already felt, somewhat better than five minutes earlier, that "this Havelaar was not so mad" as the Commandant supposed. Verbrugge was by no means lacking in understanding, and he—who knew the district of Lebak about as well as so large a region, where nothing is printed, can be known by a single person—began to see that there was, after all, a connection among Havelaar's seemingly unconnected questions, and likewise that the new Assistant Resident, however little he had set foot in the district, knew something of what was going on there.

  56. 56

    He still did not understand that joy over the poverty of Lebak, but he pressed upon himself the belief that he had misheard the expression. Later, however, when Havelaar said the same thing to him many times over, he saw how much that was great and noble lay in that joy.

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    Havelaar and Verbrugge took their seats at the table, and while drinking tea and speaking of trifling matters, they waited until Dongso came to inform the Resident that the fresh horses had been harnessed. They packed themselves into the carriage as well as they could, and drove off.

  58. 58

    With the jolting and lurching, conversation came hard. Little Max was kept quiet with a pisang, and his mother, who held him on her lap, would absolutely not admit that she was tired when Havelaar offered to relieve her of the heavy boy.

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    During a moment of enforced rest in a mudhole, Verbrugge asked the Resident whether he had already spoken with the new Assistant Resident about Mrs. Slotering. "Mr.

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    Havelaar. Has.

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    Said." "Why, of course, Verbrugge, why not?

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    That lady may stay with us. I would not gladly ..."

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    "That. It.

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    Good. Was," the Resident dragged in with much effort.

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    "I would not gladly refuse my house to a lady in her condition! Such a thing goes without saying ... is it not so, Tine?"

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    Tine, too, thought it went without saying. "You have two houses at Rangkas-Betoeng," said Verbrugge.

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    "There is room in abundance for two families." "But even were it not so.

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    "I. Should. Dare.

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    It. Her.

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    "Why, Resident," cried Mrs. Havelaar, "there is no doubt about it!" "Not.

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    Promise. For.

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    It. Is.

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    "Even were there ten of them, so long as they will take us as they find us. "A.

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    Great. Burden.

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    And. She.

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    Is." "But traveling in her condition is impossible, Resident!"

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    A violent jolt of the carriage, as it was hauled out of the mud, set an exclamation point after Tine's declaration that traveling was impossible for Mrs. Slotering.

  78. 78

    Everyone had cried out the customary "hey!" that follows such a jolt, Max had recovered in his mother's lap the pisang he had lost at the shock, and they were already a good way nearer the mud-pit that was soon to come, before the Resident could resolve to complete his sentence by adding:

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    "A. Native.

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    Woman." "Oh, that is exactly the same," Mrs. Havelaar tried to make herself understood.

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    The Resident nodded, as if he found it well that the matter was thus settled, and since speaking came so hard, they broke off the conversation.

  82. 82

    This Mrs. Slotering was the widow of Havelaar's predecessor, who had died two months earlier.

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    Verbrugge, charged in the meantime with the office of Assistant Resident, would have had the right, during that time, to occupy the spacious residence which at Rangkas-Betoeng, as in every district, has been built at government expense for the head of the regional administration.

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    He had not, however, done so—partly perhaps out of fear that he would too soon have to move again, partly to leave the use of it to that lady and her children.

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    There would otherwise have been room enough, for besides the fairly large Assistant Resident's residence itself, there stood beside it, on the same "compound," another house that had formerly served the purpose, and which, despite a somewhat ramshackle state, was still quite fit to live in.

  86. 86

    Mrs. Slotering had asked the Resident to be her advocate with her husband's successor, for permission to live in that old house until after her confinement, which she expected in a few months' time.

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    It was this request that Havelaar and his wife had so readily granted, a thing wholly in keeping with their nature, for hospitable and ready to help they were in the highest degree.

  88. 88

    We heard the Resident say that Mrs. Slotering was a "native woman." This requires some explanation for non-Indies readers, since one might easily fall into the mistaken notion that we are dealing here with a Javanese woman proper.

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    European society in the Dutch East Indies is split fairly sharply into two parts: the Europeans proper, and those who—however much they stand, legally, in altogether the same condition of rights—were not born in Europe and have, more or less, native blood in their veins.

  90. 90

    In honor of the notions of humanity in the Indies, I hasten to add here that, however sharp may be the line drawn in social intercourse between the two kinds of individuals who, before the native, alike bear the name of Hollander, this separation nevertheless in no way exhibits the barbarous character observed in America in the division of castes.

  91. 91

    I do not deny that much that is unjust and offensive still persists in this relation, and that the word liplap has more than once rung in my ears as proof of how far the non-liplap, the white man, is often removed from true civilization.

  92. 92

    It is true that the liplap is admitted into company only by way of exception, and that he is usually—if I may avail myself here of a very colloquial expression—"not reckoned as a full man"; but rarely will one hear such exclusion or disparagement put forward and defended as a basic principle.

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    Everyone is naturally free to choose his own circle and company, and the European proper is not to be blamed when he prefers association with people of his own stock to dealings with persons who—their greater or lesser moral and intellectual worth left aside—do not share his impressions and ideas, or—and this, in cases of supposed difference of civilization, is perhaps very often the main point—whose prejudices have taken a different direction from his own.

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    A liplap—to use the term that is held more polite, I should have to say a "so-called native child," but I beg leave to keep to the usage that seems born of alliteration, without intending by that expression anything insulting, and what, after all, does the word mean?—a liplap has much that is good.

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    The European, too, has much that is good. Both have much that is wrong, and in this also, then, they resemble one another.

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    But the good and the bad that are proper to each diverge too far for their intercourse, on the whole, to make for mutual pleasure.

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    Moreover—and for this the Government is much to blame—the liplap is often poorly educated.

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    The question now is not how the European would turn out if from his youth he had been so hampered in his development; but certain it is that the liplap's slight scholarly development in general stands in the way of his being placed on a level with the European, even there where he, as an individual, in civilization, scholarship, or art, might perhaps deserve precedence over a particular European person.

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    In this, too, there is again nothing new.

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    It lay also, for example, in the statecraft of William the Conqueror, to raise the most insignificant Norman above the most cultivated Saxon, and every Norman gladly appealed to the predominance of the Normans in general, in order to make his own person count even there where he would have been the least, but for the influence of his kinsmen as the party uppermost.

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    Out of such a thing there is naturally born, in social intercourse, a certain constraint, which would not be removable except by philosophical, broad-minded insights and measures on the part of the administration.

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    That the European, who in such a relation is on the winning side, accommodates himself very easily to this artificial predominance, goes without saying. But it is often droll to hear someone who acquired his civilization and his language largely in the Zandstraat of Rotterdam laugh at the liplap because the latter makes a glass of water and the government masculine, or sun and moon neuter.

  103. 103

    A liplap may be cultivated, well educated, or learned—there are such!—the moment the European, who feigned sickness so as to be left behind from the ship on which he washed plates, and who bases his claims to refinement on "if it please you" and "by your leave," stands at the head of the trading firm that won so "enormously" on the indigo in the year eighteen hundred and something ... no, long before he owned the "toko" in which he sells hams and hunting guns—when such a European remarks that the most cultivated liplap has trouble keeping the h and the g apart, he laughs at the stupidity of the man who does not know that there is a difference between a golden gate and a wooden fool.

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    But in order not to laugh at this, he would have had to know that in Arabic and Malay the cha and the hha are expressed by a single character, that Hieronymus passes by way of Geronimo into Jérôme, that out of huano we make guano, that a mitten is a hand-shoe, that stocking descends from hose, and that for Guild Heaume we say in Dutch Huillem or Willem.

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    So much erudition is too much to ask of someone who made his fortune "in" indigo, and drew his civilization out of the lucky run of the dice ... or worse!

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    And such a European can hardly associate with such a liplap!

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    I understand how Willem comes from Guillaume, and I must own that I, especially in the Moluccas, very often came to know "liplaps" who left me astonished at the range of their knowledge, and who put me upon the thought that we Europeans, however many aids stood at our service, often—and not merely by way of comparison—stand far behind the poor pariahs who from the cradle had to struggle against an artificially unfair holding-back and the absurd prejudice against their color.

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    But Mrs. Slotering was, once and for all, safeguarded against errors in Dutch, because she never spoke anything but Malay.

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    We shall come to see her later, when we drink tea with Havelaar, Tine, and little Max in the front gallery of the Assistant Resident's residence at Rangkas-Betoeng, where our traveling party, after long jolting and lurching, at last arrived safe and sound.

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    The Resident, who had come along only to install the new Assistant Resident in his office, made known his wish to return to Serang that very same day: "Because.

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    He." Havelaar declared that he, likewise, was ready for all dispatch ...

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    "It. So.

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    Busy. Had."

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    ... and the arrangement was made that to that end they would assemble half an hour later in the large front gallery of the Regent's residence. Verbrugge, prepared for this, had already, days before, given orders to the District Chiefs, the Patteh, the Kliwon, the Djaksa, the tax collector, a few mantries, and furthermore to all the native officials who were to attend this ceremony, to gather at the chief town.

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    The Adhipatti took his leave, and rode to his house.

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    Mrs. Havelaar looked over her new dwelling, and was very pleased with it, above all because the garden was large, which seemed to her so good for little Max, who had to be in the open air a great deal. The Resident and Havelaar had gone to their rooms to change, for at the ceremony that was to take place, the officially prescribed costume seemed to be a requirement.

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    Around the house stood hundreds of people, who had either escorted the Resident's carriage on horseback or belonged to the retinue of the summoned Chiefs.

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    The police and office attendants ran busily to and fro. In short, everything showed that the monotony of that forgotten patch of ground in the Javanese Westhoek was, for a moment, broken by a little life.

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    Before long the Adhipatti's handsome carriage drove up into the forecourt. The Resident and Havelaar, glittering with gold and silver but stumbling somewhat over their dress-swords, stepped into it, and betook themselves to the Regent's residence, where they were received with the music of gongs and gamlangs.

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    Verbrugge too, who had rid himself of his mud-spattered costume, had already arrived there.

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    The lesser Chiefs sat in a great circle, after the eastern manner, on mats upon the ground; and at the end of the long gallery stood a table, at which the resident, the Adhipatti, the assistant-resident, the controller, and some half-dozen Chiefs took their places. Tea was passed round with pastries, and the simple ceremony began.

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    The resident rose and read aloud the decree of the Governor-General by which Max Havelaar had been appointed assistant-resident of the division of Bantan-Kidoel, or South Bantam, as Lebak is called by the natives.

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    He then took up the official gazette in which stood the oath prescribed in general for the assumption of public offices, and reading: "that, in order to be named or promoted to the office of *****, one has promised or given nothing to anyone, nor shall promise or give; that one shall be loyal and true to His Majesty the King of the Netherlands; obedient to His Majesty's representative in the Indian provinces; that one shall strictly observe and cause to be observed the laws and regulations that have been given or shall be given; and that one shall conduct oneself in all things as becomes a good ... (here: assistant-resident)."

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    To this followed naturally the sacramental words: "so truly help me God Almighty."

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    Havelaar repeated the words that had been read out to him.

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    As comprehended within this oath, there ought properly to have been understood the promise to protect the native population against extortion and oppression.

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    For, in swearing that one would uphold the existing laws and regulations, one need only cast one's eye over the numerous prescriptions on that head to see that, properly speaking, a special oath in this matter was scarcely called for. But the lawgiver seems to have held that an abundance of good can do no harm; at any rate, an additional oath is required of the assistant-residents, by which that obligation toward the lowly man is once more expressly stated.

  128. 128

    Havelaar therefore had once again to take "God Almighty" as witness to the promise: that he would "protect the native population against oppression, ill-treatment, and extortion." For a fine observer it would have been worth the trouble to mark the difference, on this occasion, between the bearing and tone of the resident and those of Havelaar.

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    Both of them had attended such a ceremony many times before. The difference I mean, then, did not lie in being more or less struck by what was new and unaccustomed, but was caused solely by the divergence of the characters and conceptions of these two persons.

  130. 130

    The resident did indeed speak somewhat faster than usual, since he had only to read out the decree and the oaths — which spared him the labor of searching for his concluding words; yet on his part everything was done with a gravity and an earnestness that must have impressed upon a superficial onlooker a very high notion of the weight he attached to the affair.

  131. 131

    Havelaar, on the contrary, when he repeated the oaths with raised finger, had something in his face, voice, and bearing as if he meant to say: "that goes without saying — I would do it even without God Almighty"; and whoever understood human nature would have trusted more to his unconstrained ease and seeming indifference than to the official solemnity of the resident.

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    Is it not indeed absurd to suppose that the man who is called to administer justice, the man into whose hands the weal or woe of thousands has been given, would hold himself bound by a few spoken syllables, when he does not feel himself driven to it, even without those syllables, by his own heart? We believe of Havelaar that he would have protected the poor and the oppressed, wherever he might find them, even had he sworn the opposite by "God Almighty."

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    There followed upon this an address by the resident to the Chiefs, in which he presented to them the assistant-resident as the head of the Division, invited them to obey him, to fulfill their obligations punctually, and more commonplaces of the like. The chiefs were then presented to Havelaar one by one, by name.

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    He gave each of them his hand, and the "installation" was over. The midday meal was taken at the Adhipatti's house, to which the commandant Duclari had also been invited.

  135. 135

    Immediately after its conclusion, the resident, who would gladly be back in Serang that same evening, set off: --Because.

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    He. It.

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    So. Particularly.

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    Busy. Had.

  139. 139

    ...back into his traveling-carriage; and so Rangkas-Betoeng soon sank again into a stillness such as is to be expected of an inland Javanese post inhabited by only a few Europeans and lying, moreover, off the great road. The acquaintance between Duclari and Havelaar was soon brought onto an easy footing.

  140. 140

    The Adhipatti showed signs of being pleased with his new "elder brother," and Verbrugge related afterward that the resident too — whom he had escorted part of the way on his return journey to Serang — had expressed himself very favorably about the Havelaar family, who had tarried some days at his house on their passage to Lebak. He also said that Havelaar, standing well noted with the Government, would most probably soon be promoted to a higher office, or at least transferred to a more "lucrative" division.

  141. 141

    Max and "his Tine" had only lately returned from a journey to Europe, and felt weary of what I once heard very aptly called a portmanteau-life. They counted themselves happy, therefore, to be able at last, after much wandering, to dwell once more in a place where they would be at home.

  142. 142

    Before his journey to Europe, Havelaar had been assistant-resident of Amboina, where he had had many difficulties to contend with, because the population of that island was in a fermenting and rebellious state in consequence of the many wrong measures that had been taken of late. Not without vigor had he managed to suppress this spirit of revolt; but out of grief at the scant help he was given in this from higher quarters, and out of vexation at the wretched administration that for centuries has been depopulating and ruining the splendid regions of the Moluccas ...

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    Let the interested reader seek to obtain what was already written on this subject in 1825 by the Baron Van der Capellen, and he may find the Proclamations of this friend of man in the Indian Gazette of that year. The condition there has not improved since that time!

  144. 144

    However that may be, Havelaar did at Amboina what he might and could; but out of vexation at the lack of cooperation from those who were called in the first place to support his efforts, he had fallen ill, and this had moved him to set out for Europe. Strictly speaking, on being reposted he would have had a claim to a better choice than the poor, by no means prosperous division of Lebak, since his sphere of work at Amboina had been of greater importance, and there, with no resident over him, he had stood wholly on his own.

  145. 145

    Moreover, even before he set out for Amboina, there had been talk of raising him to resident, and it surprised some, therefore, that the administration of a Division should now be entrusted to him which yielded so little in cultivation-emoluments — since many measure the importance of a post by the income attached to it.

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    He himself, however, did not complain of this at all, for his ambition was by no means of such a nature that he would beg for a higher rank or greater gain. And yet this last would have stood him in good stead!

  147. 147

    For on his travels in Europe he had spent the little that he had laid by in former years. He had even left debts behind there, and so he was, in a word, poor.

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    Yet he had never regarded his office as a means of making money, and on his appointment to Lebak he resolved, with contentment, to make up the arrears by thrift — a resolution in which his wife, who was so simple in her tastes and needs, would support him with great pleasure.

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    But thrift came hard to Havelaar.

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    For himself he could confine his wants to the strictly necessary. Indeed, without the least effort he could keep within those bounds; but wherever others needed help, to help, to give, was for him a true passion.

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    He himself saw this weakness, reasoned with all the sound sense that had been given him how wrongly he acted in supporting someone else when he himself had more claim upon his own aid ... felt this wrong still more keenly when "his Tine" and Max too, whom he both loved so dearly, had to suffer under the consequences of his open-handedness ... he reproached himself for his good-heartedness as a weakness, as vanity, as a craving to pass for a prince in disguise ... he promised himself he would mend his ways; and yet ... every time this person or that contrived to present himself as the victim of misfortune, he forgot everything in order to help.

  152. 152

    And this in spite of the bitter experience of the consequences of this virtue, which through excess had turned into a fault.

  153. 153

    Eight days before the birth of his little Max, he did not have what was needed to buy the iron cradle in which his darling was to rest, and a short while before that he had given up the few ornaments of his wife to stand by someone who was assuredly in better circumstances than himself.

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    But all this lay far behind them again by the time they had arrived at Lebak!

  155. 155

    With cheerful calm they had taken possession of the house "where they now hoped at last to stay for some time." With a peculiar delight they had ordered at Batavia the furniture that was to make everything so comfortable and snug.

  156. 156

    They showed each other the spots where they would breakfast, where little Max would play, where the library would stand, where in the evenings he would read aloud to her what he had written that day — for he was always busy unfolding his ideas on paper ... and: "one day that shall be printed," thought Tine, "and then people will see who her Max was!" But he had never let anything be set in type of what went on in his head, because a certain bashfulness possessed him, something not unlike modesty.

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    He himself, at any rate, knew no better way to describe this bashfulness than by asking those who urged him toward publicity: "would you let your daughter walk out into the street without a shift?"

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    This, again, was one of the many boutades that made his circle say that "this Havelaar was after all an odd sort of man," and I do not maintain the contrary. But if one took the trouble to translate his uncommon way of speaking, one would have found, in that strange question about a girl's toilet, perhaps the text for a discourse on the chastity of the mind — which is shy before the gaze of the boorish passer-by, and withdraws into a covering of maidenly modesty.

  159. 159

    Yes, they would be happy at Rangkas-Betoeng, Havelaar and his Tine!

  160. 160

    The only care that weighed upon them was the debts they had left behind in Europe, swelled by the still unpaid costs of the return journey to the Indies, and by the outlay for the furnishing of their dwelling. But there was no real want.

  161. 161

    Would they not, after all, live on the half, on a third of his income? Perhaps too — yes, probably — he would soon become resident, and then everything would be easily settled in a short time ...

  162. 162

    --Although it would grieve me sorely, Tine, to leave Lebak, for there is much to be done here.

  163. 163

    You must be very thrifty, dearest, and then perhaps we can clear it all off, even without promotion ... and then I hope to stay here long, very long!

  164. 164

    An exhortation to thrift, now, he had no need to address to her.

  165. 165

    She was truly not to blame that economy had become necessary; yet she had so identified herself with her Max that she by no means took that exhortation as a reproach, which indeed it was not. For Havelaar knew very well that he alone had failed through his too-far-driven open-handedness, and that her fault — if indeed there was any fault on her side — had lain solely in this: that out of love for Max she had always approved everything he did.

  166. 166

    Yes, she had thought it good when he led those two poor women from the Nieuwstraat, who had never left Amsterdam and had never "been out," about the Haarlem fair, under the droll pretext that the King had charged him with "the amusing of old women who had behaved so well." She thought it good that he treated the orphans from all the institutions in Amsterdam to cake and almond-milk, and loaded them with toys.

  167. 167

    She fully understood that he paid the inn-bill of the family of poor singers who wanted to go back to their own country but were loath to leave behind their belongings, among which were the harp, and the fiddle, and the bass, that they so needed for their meager trade.

  168. 168

    She could not blame him for bringing to her the girl who had accosted him in the street at night ... that he gave her food and shelter, and did not speak the all-too-cheap "go, and sin no more!" before he had made that "not sinning" possible for her.

  169. 169

    She found it very fine in her Max that he had the piano carried back into the front room of the householder whom he had heard say how it grieved him that his daughters were deprived of music "after that bankruptcy." She understood very well that her Max bought free the slave-family at Menado who were so bitterly distressed at having to mount the auctioneer's table.

  170. 170

    She thought it natural that Max gave horses back to the Alfoers in the Minahassa, whose horses had been ridden to death by the officers of the Bayonnaise.

  171. 171

    She had nothing against his calling to himself, at Menado and at Amboina, the shipwrecked crews of the American whalers and caring for them, and thinking himself too much the grand seigneur to present an innkeeper's bill to the American Government.

  172. 172

    She fully understood why the officers of almost every man-of-war that put in lodged for the most part with Max, and why his house was their beloved pied-à-terre. Was he not her Max?

  173. 173

    Was it not too petty, too trifling, was it not absurd, to wish to bind him — who thought so princely — to the rules of economy and household management that hold for others?

  174. 174

    And besides, even if for the moment there should sometimes be something disproportionate between income and outlay, was not Max, her Max, destined for a brilliant career? Must he not soon find himself in circumstances that would enable him, without exceeding his income, to give free rein to his magnanimous impulses?

  175. 175

    Must not her Max become Governor-General of that dear Indies, or ... a king?

  176. 176

    Was it not even strange that he was not a king already?

  177. 177

    If any fault could be found in her, then her infatuation with Havelaar was to blame for it; and if ever, then here it would hold good: that much must be forgiven to whoever has loved much!

  178. 178

    But there was nothing in her to forgive.

  179. 179

    Without sharing the exaggerated notions she cherished of her Max, one may yet grant that he had a good career before him, and that, had this well-founded prospect been realized, the unpleasant consequences of his open-handedness would indeed soon have been cleared out of the way.

  180. 180

    But yet another reason of an entirely different kind excused her seeming carelessness, and his.

  181. 181

    She had lost both her parents very young, and had been brought up by her relatives.

  182. 182

    When she married, she was told that she possessed a small fortune, which was then in fact paid out; but Havelaar discovered, from a few letters of an earlier time and from some loose notes that she kept in a casket inherited from her mother, that her family, on her father's side as on her mother's, had been very rich, without its becoming clear to him, however, where, how, or when that wealth had been lost.

  183. 183

    She herself, who had never taken any interest in matters of a pecuniary kind, knew little or nothing to answer when Havelaar pressed her for some information concerning the former possessions of her kin. Her grandfather, the Baron Van W., had gone over to England with William the Fifth and had been a cavalry captain in the army of the Duke of York.

  184. 184

    He seems to have led a merry life with the exiled members of the stadtholder's family, which was indeed given by many as the cause of the downfall of his fortune.

  185. 185

    Later, at Waterloo, he fell in a charge among the hussars of Boreel.

  186. 186

    Moving it was to read the letters of her father — then a youth of eighteen, who as a lieutenant in that corps, in the very same charge, received a saber-cut to the head, of whose consequences he was to die insane eight years later — letters to his mother, in which he lamented how he had searched in vain over the battlefield for the body of his father.

  187. 187

    As for her descent on her mother's side, she remembered that her grandfather had lived in very considerable style, and from some papers it appeared that he had been in possession of the posts in Switzerland, in the way that even now, in a great part of Germany and Italy, that branch of revenue makes up the appanage of the Princes of Thurn and Taxis.

  188. 188

    This led one to suppose a great fortune; but of this too, through wholly unknown causes, nothing — or at any rate very little — had passed to the second generation.

  189. 189

    Havelaar learned the little that was to be learned of it only after his marriage, and in his inquiries it stirred his wonder that the casket of which I spoke just now — kept, with its contents, out of a feeling of piety, without her guessing that there might be papers in it of importance from a pecuniary point of view — had, in an unaccountable way, been lost.

  190. 190

    However disinterested he was, he built upon these and many other circumstances the opinion that behind all this lay hidden a roman intime, and one cannot take it amiss in him that he — who, for his costly disposition, needed a great deal — should have seen with joy that romance come to a happy end.

  191. 191

    However it may stand with the existence of that romance, and whether or not there had been any spoliation, certain it is that in Havelaar's imagination something was born which one might call a rêve aux millions.

  192. 192

    Yet once again it was peculiar that he, who would have tracked down and defended so meticulously and sharply the right of another — however deeply buried under dusty deeds and tangled chicaneries — should here, where his own interest was at stake, have with negligence let slip the moment at which the matter might have had to be taken in hand.

  193. 193

    He seemed to feel something like shame because it was here his own advantage that was concerned; and I firmly believe that, had "his Tine" been married to another — to someone who had turned to him with the request to break the cobweb in which her ancestral fortune had remained entangled — he would have succeeded in putting "the interesting orphan" in possession of the fortune that belonged to her.

  194. 194

    But now that interesting orphan was his wife, her fortune was his own; he found, therefore, something tradesmanlike in it, something demeaning, to ask in her name: "do you not still owe me something?"

  195. 195

    And yet he could not shake off that dream of millions, were it only to have an excuse at hand against the often-recurring self-reproach that he spent too much money.

  196. 196

    Only shortly before the return to Java — when he had already suffered much under the pressure of lack of money, when he had had to bow his proud head beneath the furca caudina of many a creditor — had he been able to overcome his sloth, or his bashfulness, and set about the matter of the millions he believed were still owed to him.

  197. 197

    And he was answered with an old current account ... an argument, as everyone knows, against which nothing can be urged.

  198. 198

    But they would be so thrifty at Lebak!

  199. 199

    And why not, after all?

  200. 200

    In such an uncivilized land there are no girls roaming the streets late in the evening with a little honor to sell for a little food.

  201. 201

    There are no people wandering about there who live by problematic trades.

  202. 202

    There it does not happen that a household is suddenly ruined by a turn of fortune ... and yet it was of just such a kind that the reefs usually were on which Havelaar's good intentions ran aground.

  203. 203

    The number of Europeans in that Division was so small that it could not come into consideration, and the Javanese at Lebak too poor — under whatever turn of fate — to become of interest through still greater poverty.

  204. 204

    All this Tine did not so reflect upon — for to do so she would have had to give herself, more exactly than out of love for Max she cared to do, an account of the causes of their less favorable circumstances — but there lay in their new surroundings something that breathed calm, and an absence of all those occasions — of more or less falsely romantic tint — that had so often made Havelaar say in earlier days: --Is it not so, Tine, that this, after all, is a case from which I cannot withdraw?

  205. 205

    And to which she had always answered: --Why no, Max, from that you cannot withdraw!

  206. 206

    We shall see how the simple, seemingly unmoved Lebak cost Havelaar more than all the former extravagances of his heart taken together.

  207. 207

    But this they did not know! They looked toward the future with confidence, and felt themselves so happy in their love and in the possession of their child ...

  208. 208

    --What a lot of roses in the garden, cried Tine, and there too are rampeh and tjempaka, and so much melati, and just look at all those beautiful lilies ...

  209. 209

    And, children as they were, they amused themselves with their new house. And when in the evening Duclari and Verbrugge, after a visit to Havelaar, returned to their shared dwelling, they spoke much of the childlike cheerfulness of the newly arrived family.

  210. 210

    Havelaar betook himself to his office, and stayed there through the night, until the following morning.

The particulars

The text
Max Havelaar, Multatuli. The Novel.
Translation
Public-domain Dutch (Multatuli, d. 1887; published 1860). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
Reading aloud
Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
Words
Every word of the text, by letter.
Data
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.