time he returns and makes a report, that was not unfavourable to the Controller. But lo! the public (that is, ‘no-body and every one’) at Padang had now discovered that the Controller had only been suspended to afford an opportunity for the removal of the Assistant Resident from the place, in order to prevent his intended investigation of the disappearance of that child, or at least to delay it till it would be more difficult to clear up the mystery. I now repeat that I do not know whether that was true, but since my better acquaintance with General van Damme, it appears to me very credible; and at Padang likewise there was nobody who did not think him capable of such a thing, considering how very bad his morals were. Most people only gave him credit for one quality, intrepidity in danger; and if I, who have seen him in danger, stuck to the opinion that he was, after all, a courageous man, that alone would induce me to withhold this story. It is true that he, in Sumatra, had caused many ‘to be sabred down,’ but that ought to have been seen more closely, to form a correct estimate of his valour; and, however strange it may appear, I believed that he owed his military glory in a great measure to the spirit of contradiction which animates us all more or less. One readily admits, it is true, that Peter or Paul is this, or that; but what he is, that one must leave him, and never can you be so sure to be praised as when you have a great, a very apparent fault. You, Verbrugge, are drunk every day. . .”
