Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/148



spare no one when principles are at stake, yet it is obvious that with Stern I must adopt a different course from the one I have taken with Frits, and as it must be anticipated that my name—the firm is Last & Co., but my name is Drystubble: Batavus Drystubble—will be connected with a book containing matters which are not in accord with the respect that every decent man and broker owes to himself, I deem it my duty to inform you how I have endeavoured to bring this Stern back to the right way.

I have not spoken to him of the Lord—for he is a Lutheran—but I have made an appeal to his heart and his honour. Just see how I have managed it, and you may note how much we can do with a knowledge of men. I have heard him say: “On my word of honour,” and I asked him what he meant by that.

“Well,” he said, “that I pledge my honour for the truth of what I say.”

“That’s a good deal,” I went on. “Are you so sure that you always speak the truth?”

“Yes,” he declared, “from the truth I never swerve. When my breast glows ”

The reader knows the rest.

“That certainly is very fine,” I said, and I looked quite innocent, as though I believed it.

But this is just where I had set a clever trap for him, with the object—without risking the danger of seeing old Stern fall into the hands of Busselinck & Waterman—the object of putting this young brat in his proper place for once, and making him feel the enormous distance there is between an absolute beginner—even