Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/190

 had been in earnest with their criminal suspicion. Perhaps, however, there was a reason for this apparent omission. For isn’t one compelled to keep and feed a prisoner? As I was not allowed to leave Padang, I was in reality a prisoner all the same, but a prisoner without a roof and without bread. I had repeatedly, but every time without result, written to the General to say that he was not at liberty to prevent my departure from Padang, for that, even if I were guilty of the worst crime, no offence may be punished with

“After the Council of Justice, being evidently at a loss how to act in the matter, had found a way out by declaring itself incompetent, because prosecution for offences in office may only take place on the authorization of the Government in Batavia, the General detained me, as I said, nine months at Padang. At last he received orders from headquarters to allow me to go to Batavia.

“When, a couple of years after, I had a little money—my dear Tine, had given it me!—I paid a few thousand guilders in order to settle the Natal cash-accounts of 1842 and 1843, and someone who might be considered to represent the Government of Netherlands India said to me: ‘I shouldn’t have done this in your place  I should have given them a bill on eternity.’ Ainsi va le monde!”

Just as Havelaar wanted to start the story his guests expected from him, and which was to make it clear why and in what manner he had so ‘crossed’ General Vandamme at Natal, Mrs. Slotering showed herself in the front veranda of her house, and beckoned the police-orderly who was sitting on a bench at one side of Havelaar’s residence. He went over to her, and then called out something to a man who had just entered her grounds, probably in order to go to the kitchen at the back of the house. Our company would probably not have paid attention to this, if Tine had not said at table during the afternoon that Mrs. Slotering was so timid and seemed to exercise a kind of supervision over everyone who entered the grounds. One could see the man whom the orderly had