“After the Council of Justice, which was at a loss how to deal with the affair, had found a way out of the difficulty by declaring itself unable to decide, because a prosecution for crime in the service of the country could not be held without the authorization of the Government at Batavia, the General kept me, as I said, nine months at Padang.
“At last he himself received instructions from headquarters to let me set out for Batavia.
“A few years afterwards, when I had some moneydear Tine; you had given it meI paid some thousand guilders to clear the Natal accounts of 1841 and 1842, and then a person, who may be considered to represent the Government of the Dutch Indies, said, ‘I would, not have done that in your place. . . I should have drawn a bill of exchange on eternity.’
“Ainsi va le monde!”
Havelaar was about to recommence the narrative, which his guests expected from him; and wherein he was to explain in what and why he had so opposed General van Damme at Natal, when Madam Slotering appeared in her fore-gallery, beckoning to the policeman who sat on a bench near Havelaar’s house. The policeman went over to her, and then said something to a man who had just entered the grounds, probably intending to go to the kitchen that was behind the house. Our company would probably have paid no attention to this, if Madam Havelaar had not said that afternoon at dinner that Madam
