Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/370

 I have made the end of the history of Saïdjah shorter than I could have done if I had felt inclined to paint something dreary. The reader will have observed how I lingered over the description of the waiting under the Ketapan, as if I was afraid of the sad catastrophe, and how I glided over that with aversion. And yet that was not my intention, when I began to speak about Saïdjah. For I feared that stronger colours were requisite to move when describing such strange circumstances. Yet while writing I felt that it would be an insult to the reader to believe that I ought to have put more blood in my picture

I could have done it, for I have documents before me but no!—rather a confession.

Yes! a confession. I do not know whether Saïdjah loved Adinda: I know not whether he went to Badoer, nor whether he died in the Lampoons by Dutch bayonets. I do not know whether his father died by being beaten with rods, because he left Badoer without a passport, I do not know whether Adinda counted the moons by lines in her rice-floor.

All this I do not know.

But I know than all this. I know,, that there were Adindas and  Saïdjahs, and that. I have already said that I can give the names of persons who, like the parents of Saïdjah and Adinda, were driven away by oppression from their