bravery might not have served them for the conveyance of the invariable adjunct: ‘But . . . his morality!’ And also that this immorality would not have been taken so seriously by the many who themselves were not wholly unassailable on that score, had they not needed it as a counterpoise to his renown for bravery, which with some would hardly allow them to sleep.
“One quality he really possessed in a high degree: energy. Whatever he made up his mind to do, was to be done, and usually also—was done. But—you see that again I at once have the contrast at hand!—but then in the choice of the means he certainly was a little . . . free, and, as Van der Palm, I believe unjustly, said of Napoleon: ‘Obstacles of morality never stood in his way!’ Well, in that way, of course, it is certainly easier to attain one’s object than if one did consider oneself bound by such a thing.
“So the Assistant-Resident of Padang had sent in a report that was favourable to the suspended Controller, whose suspension thus assumed an appearance of injustice. The Padang rumours continued: the lost child was still continually talked about. The Assistant-Resident again felt himself called upon to take up this matter; but before he could obtain any clarity in the affair, he received an Order by which the Governor of the West Coast of Sumatra suspended him ‘for dishonesty in official dealings.’ It was suggested that, from motives of friendship or sympathy, he had, against his better knowledge, placed the affair of the Controller in a false light.
“I have not read the documents that deal with this matter, but I absolutely know that the Assistant-Resident had no relations whatever with this Controller, which would also naturally be evident from the fact that it was he who had been specially chosen to inquire into the affair. I also know that he was a man of undoubted probity, and that the Government knew him to be such, as is borne out by the cancellation of the suspension, after the case had been investigated elsewhere than on the West Coast of Sumatra. The Controller, also, was afterwards reinstated without a blemish on his record. It was their suspension that suggested the epigram to
