Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/318

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Max Havelaar
299

the intention of many. Generally, he was shortly afterwards at the place where the injustice happened, yes, he had often been there already, and had for the most part examined into the affair before the plaintiff himself had returned to his dwelling. In this manner he visited in this extensive department, villages that were eighty miles distant from Rankas-Betong, without the Regent or even the Controller Verbrugge knowing that he was absent from the capital. His object in so doing was to shield the complainants from the danger of revenge, and at the same time to spare the Regent the shame of a public inquiry, which with Havelaar would not have ended in a revocation of the complaint. He still hoped that the chiefs would turn back on the dangerous road which they had already walked so long; and he would in that case have been contented merely to claim indemnification for the poor sufferers.

But on every occasion of his speaking to the Regent, it was evident to him that all promises of amendment were vain; and he was deeply pained at the ill-success of his endeavours.

We shall now leave him for a time in his disappointment and the difficult work he had undertaken, to relate to the reader the history of the Javanese Saïdjah in the dessah Badoer. I extract from Havelaar’s notes the name of this village and that of the Javanese concerned. It is a