Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/30

14 those who do otherwise are discontented people, whom I cannot bear.

Yes, indeed, it was he who had rescued me from the hands of the Greek! Now don’t think that I have ever been captured by pirates, or that I had a quarrel in the Levant. I have already told you that after my marriage I went with my wife to The Hague. There we saw the pictures in the Maurits-House, and bought flannel in the Veene-street. That is the only excursion our business has ever permitted me, as there is so much doing in our firm. No, it was in Amsterdam itself that, for my sake, he struck a Greek, so that the man’s nose bled. For he always meddled in things that did not concern him.

It was in 1833 or 1834, I think, and it was in September, for the Amsterdam fair was on. As my people intended to make a clergyman of me, I learnt Latin. Afterwards I have often asked myself why one must understand Latin in order to say in one’s own language: “God is good!” Enough, I went to the Latin school—they now say grammar school—and there was a fair on in Amsterdam, I mean. On the Westermarket there were booths, and if you are an Amsterdammer, reader, and of about my age, you will remember that among those there was one which was distinguished for the black eyes and the long plaits of a girl who was dressed in Greek fashion. Her father was a Greek, or at least he looked like a Greek. They sold all sorts of scents.

I was just old enough to think the girl pretty, without, however, having the courage to speak to her. For that matter it would have availed me but little, for girls of eighteen look upon a boy of sixteen as a child. And in this they are quite right. Yet we, boys of “the fourth,” came every evening to the Westermarket to see that girl.

Now it happened on one of these occasions that he who at this moment stood before me with his shawl was with us, although he was a couple of years younger than the others, and therefore still too childish to look at the Greek girl. But he was the top boy of