Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/142

 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 pro-