Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/88

 discourses as “slimy.” I don’t consider this a tasteful word, but am bound to admit that it expressed the chief characteristic of the Resident’s eloquence pretty accurately.

I have said nothing yet about Max Havelaar and his wife—for these were the two persons who got out of the coach with their child and the baboo, after the Resident—and it might be sufficient to leave the description of their appearance and character to the course of events and the reader’s own imagination. As, however, I have now started to describe, I will tell you that Mrs. Havelaar was not beautiful, but that in look and speech she had something very sweet, and that by the easy freedom of her manners she gave unmistakable evidence of having moved in the world, and of belonging to the higher classes of society. She had none of the stiffness and unpleasingness of middle-class gentility which, in order to pass as “distinguished,” imagines it must needs aggravate itself and others with shyness; also she attached but little importance to the appearances that seem to have a certain value for most women. In her dress she was a pattern of simplicity. A white baadjoo of muslin with a blue wrapper—I believe in Europe one would call a garment of this kind a peignoir—completed her travelling costume. Round her neck she wore a thin silk cord, to which were attached two small medallions, unseen however, as they were concealed in the folds that covered her breast. For the remainder, her hair à la chinoise, and a small spray of melatti in her kondeh such was her complete toilet.

I said she was not beautiful, and yet I should not like you to think her the reverse. I trust you will think her beautiful as soon as I shall have had the opportunity of representing her, burning with indignation about that which she called the “neglect of genius,” when her adored Max was concerned, or when she was animated by a thought connected with the well-being of her child. It has too often been said that the face is the mirror of the soul, for any one to value the portrait-beauty of a face whose immo-