cat and the roast, the tinder and the spark, and a boy and a girl are ill to keep asunder." Given, then, as the main components of a Malay court, a band of lusty young roisterers, separated from a hundred or more of equally idle young women by nothing more substantial than a few bamboo fences, and such like frail obstructions, and the resulting happenings can be more decorously left to the imagination than indicated in even the broadest outline. The question of marriage rarely arises, for it is only very infrequently that a râja can bring himself to dispose in this fashion of any of the female inmates of his numerous households. Therefore, all love affairs have to be conducted with the utmost stealth and secrecy; the atmosphere of the court is pungent with perennial immorality and intrigue; and the sordidness of it all is only redeemed by the fact that errant man and maid alike go from day to day in imminent danger of torture and death. These are the penalties of discovery.
Nevertheless, the majority of the intrigues carried on by the palace women with the men of the court become sooner or later more or less notorious. The inordinate vanity of the women largely contributes to this, for they pride themselves upon the number and upon the recklessness of their lovers. When torn by jealousy or spite, or by a desire to be avenged upon a faithless wooer, a girl is often enough moved to betray the secret she shares with him, regardless of the consequences to herself. Moreover, it is a point of honour with the palace women to exact
