Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/108

 he had depended entirely on himself. Moreover, before he went to Amboina, his elevation to the rank of Resident had already been mooted, and it created some astonishment that he was now charged with the control of a division which paid such small produce emolument, as most people measure the importance of an office by the income attached to it. He himself, however, did not complain of this in the least, for his ambition was not of a nature to make him beg for higher rank or better remuneration.

Yet the latter would have stood him in good stead! For his travels in Europe had absorbed his small savings of former years. He had even left some debts there, and he was, in a word, poor. But he had never looked on his office as primarily a money-business, and on his appointment to Lebak he contentedly made up his mind that he would recover his arrears by economy, knowing that his wife, simple in tastes and wants, would gladly assist him in this respect.

But economy was not very easy to Havelaar. For himself he was able to limit his needs to the strictly necessary. Indeed, without the slightest effort he might so restrict himself; but when others required assistance, it was a veritable passion with him to help and to give. He knew this was a weakness; he argued out, with all the common sense he possessed, how unjust it was to assist anyone else when he himself had a stronger claim to his own support he felt this injustice still more keenly when also “his Tine” and Max, both of whom he so loved, suffered from the consequences of his liberality  he reproached himself for his good nature as a weakness, as vanity, as a craving for masquerading as a prince in disguise  he promised himself that he would mend his way, and yet  every time someone or other succeeded in presenting himself as a victim of adversity, he forgot all his good intentions in his eagerness to help. And this in spite of the bitter experience of the consequences of this virtue grown into a vice. A week before the birth of little Max he was without the needful wherewith to buy the iron cot that was to hold his