Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/351

 Tjipoeroet had been lost in consequence, and not by the piece of glass which little Djamien had thrown while hiding himself behind the pagger, ought I then to have been so rough to her, and called her by unseemly names? What if I die at Batavia without having asked her pardon for such harshness? Will it not make me appear as if I were a bad man, who scolds a girl? And when it is heard that I have died in a foreign country, will not every one at Badoer say, ‘It is good that Saïdjah died; for he had an insolent mouth against Adinda?’&#x202F;”

Thus his thoughts took a course which differed much from their former buoyancy, and involuntarily were uttered, first in half words and softly, soon in a monologue, and at last in the melancholy song, of which a translation follows. My first intention was to have recourse to measure and rhyme in this translation: but, like Havelaar, I thought it better to leave it without the corset.