Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/325

 “Once more I ask for a moment’s audience, be it this night or be it early to-morrow morning! And still again I do not ask this for myself, but for the cause I advocate, the cause of justice and humanity, which is at the same time the cause of a well-considered policy.

“If Your Excellency’s conscience is at ease about leaving here without hearing me, mine will be clear through the conviction that I have done everything possible to prevent the sad and bloody events that will soon be the consequence of the self-willed ignorance in which the Government is left concerning the things that happen among the population.

“”

Havelaar waited that evening. He waited the whole night.

He had hoped that perhaps anger at the tone of his letter would bring about what he had vainly tried to attain by gentleness and patience. His hope was in vain. The Governor-General departed without having heard Havelaar. Another Excellency had retired to rest in the motherland!

Havelaar wandered about, poor and forsaken. He sought

Enough, estimable Stern! I, Multatuli, take up the pen. You are not called upon to write Havelaar’s life-history. I have called you into being I made you come from Hamburg  I taught you to write fairly good Dutch, in a very short time  I made you kiss Louise Rosemeyer, who is “in” sugar  it is enough, Stern, you can go!

“That Shawlman and his wife ”

Halt! miserable product of sordid covetousness and blasphemous hypocrisy! I created you you grew under my pen to a monster  I loathe my own creation: choke in coffee and vanish!