Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/288

 tect the Javanese against tyranny, and beg the reader to remember how Havelaar, when repeating these oaths, had something of a disdainful look;—and will only now point out the difficult situation of the man who thought himself bound to his duty quite independently of the repeated oaths.

And for him this difficulty was greater still than it would have been for many others, because his heart was soft, and in contrast with his mind, which, the reader may have perceived by this time, was quite the opposite. So he had not only to contend with the fear of man, and the cares of office or advancement, but also with the duties which he had to fulfil as a husband and a father: he had to conquer an enemy in his own heart. He could not see suffering without suffering himself, and it would lead me too far, if I quoted examples, of how he always took even where he was injured and offended, the part of an adversary against himself. He had told Duclari and Verbrugge how in his youth he had found something attractive in duelling with the sabre, which was true; but he did not add, how he, after having wounded his adversary, generally wept, and cherished his late enemy as a loved sister, till he was quite recovered. I could relate how he, at Natal, had spoken in friendly manner to the man condemned to hard labour who had shot at him, how he caused him to be fed, and gave him more liberty than others, because he thought he had discovered