Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/84

 All rose. Duclari, who did not wish his presence in the pendoppo to be interpreted as if he also were on the boundary to welcome the Assistant-Resident, the latter being, though his superior, not his chief, and moreover “a fool,” Duclari mounted his horse and rode away, followed by his servant.

The Adhipatti and Verbrugge placed themselves at the entrance of the pendoppo, and saw a travelling-coach coming which was drawn by four horses, and which, pretty well covered with mud, presently stopped near the little bamboo building.

It would have been difficult to guess all that the coach contained, before Dongso, assisted by the “runners” and a number of servants belonging to the retinue of the Regent, had unfastened all the straps and knots that held the carriage enclosed with a black leather covering, reminding one of the caution with which in earlier days lions and tigers were brought into a town, when the zoological gardens were still travelling menageries. Now there were no lions and tigers in the coach. The only reason why everything had been so carefully closed up was the west monsoon, which compelled one to be ready for rain. To descend from a travelling-coach in which one has for a long time jolted along the road, is not so easy as people who have never or rarely travelled in one might imagine. More or less as is the case with the poor prehistoric Saurians, which by dint of waiting long enough have at last come to form an integral portion of the clay wherein originally they had not taken up their abode with any intention of remaining, so also, with travellers who have sat too long in a travelling-coach, closely packed and in a cramped position, something takes place that I propose to call assimilation. One finally no longer knows precisely where the leather cushion of the carriage ends, and where the ego begins; in fact the idea has sometimes occurred to me that in such a coach one might have a toothache or a cramp which one might mistake for moth-holes in the cloth or vice versa.

There are few circumstances in the material world that do not give thinking Man occasion to make observations on the intellec-