Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/235



But when, afterwards, I went to the publishers of the ‘Copyist,’ to give them my twenty guilders, I was told that I owed nothing. It appears that the General had himself paid the money for me, to prevent this illustrated receipt being sent back to Batavia. Butwhat did he do, after the taking away of that turkey—?

“It was a theft; and after that epigram?”

“He punished me terribly. If he had accused me as being guilty of want of respect for the Governor of Western Sumatra, which could have been explained in those days with a little ingenuity, as an endeavour to undermine, to revolt, ‘or as theft on the public road,’ he would have showed himself to be a right-minded man. But no, he punished me better! He ordered the man who had to watch the turkeys to choose henceforth another road; and as to my epigram that is still worse—he said, and did. You see that was cruel! He did not grant me the smallest claim to be a martyr I did not become interesting by persecution, and was not allowed to be unhappy through excess of wit it was enough to disgust me once for all with epigrams and turkeys. So little encouragement extinguishes the flame of genius to the last spark! I never did it again!”