stand that I would not do such a thing now, even if there were as much reason for it as in those days. Come here, Max!nodon’t catch that little insect—come here. I say you must never catch butterflies. That little creature at first crept for a long time as a caterpillar on a tree,—that was no happy life. Now it has just got wings and likes to flutter in the air and enjoy itself, seeking food in the flowers and hurting nobody:—look, is it not prettier to see it fluttering there?”
So the conversation went on from duelling to butterflies, from the compassion of the merciful man to his cattle to cruelty to animals, from the “loi Grammont’[1] to the French Parliament at Paris where that law was accepted from the republic, to many other things.At last Havelaar got up. He excused himself to his guests, because he had business to attend to.
When the Controller visited him the following morning at his office, he did not know that the new Assistant Resident had ridden out the day before to Parang-Koedjang after the conversation in the fore-gallery, and had only just returned.
I beg the reader to believe that Havelaar was too courteous to speak so much at his own table as I have represented in the last chapters, by which I make him appear to monopolize the conversation, and neglect
- ↑ The General de Grammont was the proposer of this law. It was accepted in the Corps Législatif in the year 1850.
