Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/123

 and do we not feel that he could not have written the last lines as they are, if he had not actually seemed to hear and understand how God’s thunder called out those lines to him in roaring quavers reverberating from the mountain walls?

But in reality he did not care for verse. “It was an ugly corset,” he said, and if he were induced to read anything he had “committed,” as he put it, he delighted in spoiling his own work, either by reciting it in a tone calculated to make it ridiculous, or by suddenly stopping, especially in a most solemn passage, and throwing in a jest which was painful to his audience, but which, as coming from himself, was nothing else than a heart-wrung satire on the disproportion between that strait-jacket and his soul, which in it felt so miserably oppressed

There were but few of the Chiefs who took any of the refreshments that were served, when Havelaar with a sign ordered that tea and maneesan, the inevitable fare for such an occasion, be brought in. It seemed as if he intentionally wished to provide a pause after the last sentence of his address. And there was good reason for it. “Why,” the Chiefs were meant to think, “he already knows that so many have left our division, with bitterness at heart? Already he knows how many families have emigrated to neighbouring districts, to avoid the poverty that prevails here? And he knows even that there are so many Bantammers among the bands that in the Lampongs have unfurled the banner of rebellion against Dutch authority? What is his purpose? What does he mean? Whom do his questions refer to?”

And there were those who looked at Radhen Weera Koosooma, the District Chief of Parang Koodyang. But the majority had their eyes fixed on the ground.

“Just come here, Max!” called Havelaar, noticing his child playing outside, and the Regent took the little one on his knees. But the boy was too wild to stay there long. He bounded away, and ran round the wide circle and amused the Chiefs with his prattle, and