Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/23

Rh who take the exception as the rule, and that one saps public morality be accustoming them to applaud on the what, in the, every respectable broker or merchant considers the most ridiculous lunacy. When was married, there were thirteen of us in the office of my father-in-law,—Last & Co.—and there was plenty doing!

And still further lies on the stage. When the hero with his stiff stage-step goes off to save his oppressed country, why does the double back door invariably open of its own accord? And again, how can the person who speaks in verse foresee what the other will answer, so that it will be made easy for that other to rhyme? When the general says to the princess: “Madam, to close the gates your foes have dared,” how does he know in advance that she will say: “Then bravely let the trusty sword be bared”? For just suppose that she, learning that the gates were closed, replied that in this case she would wait a while until they were opened again, or that she would come back a little later, what would become of metre and rhyme? Is it not then acting a barefaced lie, when the general looks into her face inquiringly to learn what she means to do about those closed gates? And again: suppose the good lady had been rather inclined to retire for a night’s rest, instead of insisting on baring something? Nothing but lies!

And then this rewarded virtue! Oh, Oh, Oh! I have been a coffee-broker for seventeen years, Laurier Canal, No. 37—and therefore have seen a good deal, but I always feel greatly annoyed to see the dear good truth so twisted round. Rewarded virtue? Does not that make virtue an article of trade? The world is not like this, and it’s a thing that it isn’t. For what merit would there be in virtue if it were rewarded? Why then always this pretence of infamous lies?

Take, for instance, Lucas, our warehouseman, who already worked with the father of Last & Co.—the firm was then Last and Meyer, but the Meyers have long been out of it—he surely was a virtuous man. Never a bean was short, he went regularly to