Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/326

 of that presumptuous self-conceit in the beginning, and, above all, of that apathetic sluggishness in the last years of their administration, I have already said that Havelaar, in his difficult duty, thought he could rely upon the help of the Governor-General; and I added that this opinion was naïf. That Governor-General was expecting his successor his rest in Holland was near. We shall see what this sluggishness brought upon Havelaar, and upon the Javanese Saïdjah, whose monotonous history—one amongst many—I am now about to relate.

Yes, “monotonous” it will be! Monotonous as the history of the activity of the ant, which had to carry up its contribution for the winter store over the clod—the mountain—which blocks up the way to the storehouse. Again and again it falls back with its burden, to try again to put its feet on that little stone high there on the rock at the top of the mountain. But between it and this top there is an abyss, a depth which a thousand ants could not fillthis must be passed. Therefore the ant, that has scarcely the strength to drag its burden on even ground—a burden many times heavier than its own body—that can hardly lift it up and balance itself on an unsteady footing, has to preserve its equilibrium—when it climbs with its burden between the fore-legs, it has to sling it round to the side to make it come down on the point which stretches out on the rock,—it staggers, totters, is frightened, sinks down, endeavours to take hold of the