Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/237

 the Governor had visited me a short time before—by and by you will know why, and how—and things had happened in my house, in which I thought I had acted as a man; I accepted this appointment as a distinction, and set out from Natal for Padang. I made the passage on board a French ship, the ‘Baobab,’ of Marseilles, which had loaded pepper at Atchin, and, of course, on arriving at Natal was in want of fresh water. As soon as I arrived at Padang, with the intention to depart from there to the interior, I wished, as in duty bound, to visit the Governor, but he sent word that he could not receive me; and, at the same time, that I must delay my setting out for my new situation till further orders. You may believe that I was very much surprised at that,—the more so because he left me at Natal in a humour which made me think that he entertained a high opinion of me. I had but few acquaintances at Padang, but from the few I had, I heard, or rather perceived, that the General was very angry with me. I say that I perceived it, because, at a country place such as Padang was then, the goodwill of many can serve as a thermometer of the favour in which one stands in the eye of the Governor. I felt that a storm was near, without knowing from which point of the compass the wind would come. As I was in want of money, I asked one and another of my friends to lend me some, and was quite astonished that I was met everywhere by a refusal. At Padang, as everywhere else in the Indies, there is