examined elsewhere than on the west coast of Sumatra. This Controller also was afterwards restored to his honour. It was their suspension which inspired me with the epigram that I caused to be put down on the General’s breakfast-table by somebody who was then in his service, and had been formerly in mine—
Old Jack the Suspender, the bogie of fools—
Would surely his Conscience itself have suspended,
Were ’t not that it long ago finally ended!’ ”[1]
“Such a thing was not proper,” said Duclari.
“I quite agree; . . . but I was bound to do something. Only fancy: I had no money, received nothing: that I feared every day starvation, which in reality I was very near, I had few or no relations at Padang, and, moreover, I told the General that he was responsible if I perished from hunger, and that I should accept aid of nobody. In the interior there were persons who, on hearing what had happened, invited me to come to their homes; but the General prohibited the issue of my passport thither. Neither was I allowed to go to Java. Anywhere else I could have managed it, and perhaps there too, if people had not been so afraid of the mighty General. It ap-
- ↑
“Het wand'lend schorsbesluit, dat schorsend ons regeert,
Jan Schorsäl, Gouverneur, de weerwolf onzer dagen,
Had zijn geweten zelf met vreugd gesuspendeerd,—
Als ’t niet voor langen tijd finaal reeds ware ontslagen.”
