Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/126

 ‘Why is this, that the gamlang is silent, and the song of the maidens?’ And again they will say to him: ‘A man has died.’

“And he that travels through the villages will sit with his host at eve, and round about him the sons and daughters of the house, and the children of those that live in the villages, and he will say:

A man has died who promised to be just, and he sold justice to those who gave him money. He made his land fertile with the sweat of the labourer whom he had called away from his own field of labour. He withheld the wage from the worker, and fed himself with the food of the poor. He grew rich by the poverty of others. He had much gold and silver and precious stones in abundance, but the husbandman who dwells in the neighbourhood knew not how to still the hunger of his child. He smiled like a happy man, but one heard gnashing between the teeth of the complainer who sought justice. There was contentment on his face, but no milk in the breasts of the mothers who suckled.’

“Then the dwellers in the villages will say: ‘Allah is great we curse no one!’

“Chiefs of Lebak, one day we shall all die!

“What will be said in the villages where we held authority? And what by the passers-by who look on at the burial?

“And what shall we answer, when after our death a voice shall speak to our soul, and ask: ‘Why is there weeping in the fields, and why are the young men hiding? Who took from the barns the harvest, and from the stalls the buffalo that was to plough the field? What have you done to the brother whom I gave unto you that you should be to him as a guardian? Why is the poor man sad and why does he curse the fruitfulness of his wife?

Again Havelaar ceased, and after a moment’s silence he resumed in the simplest possible manner, and as though nothing whatever had occurred that was intended to make an impression:

“I should like to live with you in the best understanding, and I therefore ask you to look upon me as a friend. If anyone should have erred, he may depend on a lenient judgment from me, for as I