Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/136



give a good deal now, reader, to know exactly how long I could keep a heroine floating in the air, before you would, during my description of a castle, throw my book down in disgust without waiting till the poor creature came down to the ground. If in my story I required such a leap from the blue, I should certainly, by way of precaution, choose a first floor as starting-point for her jump, and a castle about which there was not much to say. However, make yourself easy: Havelaar’s house had no storeys, and the heroes of my book—good heavens! dear, trusty, irreproachable Tine, a heroine! she never vaulted out of a window.

When I closed the last chapter with a hint of some variety in the next one, it really was more an oratorical trick, with the object of making an ending that caught on, than that I actually intended you to believe that the next chapter would have no other value than “variety.” A writer is vain, just like a man. Speak ill of his mother or of the colour of his hair, say that he speaks with an Amsterdam accent—which fault no Amsterdammer ever admits—perhaps he will pardon you. But never touch the outside of the smallest subdivision of a subordinate particle of something that has lain by the side of his writing  for then he will not forgive you! If, therefore, you don’t think my book beautiful, and you should meet me, pretend that we don’t know each other.

No, even a chapter “for variety” appears to me, through the magnifying-glass of my writer’s vanity, highly important and even indispensable; and if you were to skip it, and after that showed no due appreciation of my book, I should not hesitate to reproach you with this skipping as the cause of your being unable to pronounce an opinion on my work, since it was exactly the portion