He strode up and down angrily in the inner colonnade, and at last he said in a tone that to any stranger would have sounded rough and harsh, but was very differently understood by Tine:
“Damn this laxness, this shameful laxness! Here I have sat down waiting for justice a whole month, and meanwhile those poor people suffer terribly. The Regent seems to be confident that no one dares tackle him! Look . . .”
He went into his office, and returned with a letter in his hand, a letter which lies before me, reader!
“Look! in this letter he has the audacity to make proposals to me as to the kind of labour he will have performed by the people whom he has called up unlawfully. Isn’t this carrying impudence too far? And do you know who those people are? They are women with little children, babies, pregnant women who have been driven from Parang Koodyang to the head-centre in order to labour for him! There are no more men! And they have nothing to eat, and they sleep in the road, and eat sand! Can you eat sand? Must they eat sand until I am Governor-General? Curse it!”
Tine knew very well with whom Max was in reality angry, when he spoke like this to her, whom he loved so deeply.
“And,” continued Havelaar, “for all this the responsibility falls on me! If at this very moment some of these poor creatures are wandering about outside there . . . if they see the gleam of our lamp, they will say: ‘There dwells the wretch who was to protect us! There he sits peacefully, with wife and child, and designs embroidery-patterns, and we lie here in the road with our children, starving like dogs of the forest!’ Yes, I hear it, I hear it, this cry for vengeance upon my head! Here, Max, here!”
And he kissed his child with a wildness that frightened the little one.
“My child, when they say to you that I am a wretch who had not the courage to do justice . . . that so many mothers died through my fault . . . when they say to you that your father’s
