“Of course! You see that I was not so very far wrong when I said in my epigram that the Governor ruled by suspending us.”
“And what became of all those suspended officers?”
“Oh, there were many more! All of them, one after another, were reinstated. Some of them have since occupied very important positions.”
“And Sootan Salim?”
“The General took him to Padang a prisoner, and thence he was exiled to Java. He is to this day at Tjanjor in the Preanger Regencies. When I was there in 1846, I paid him a visit. Do you remember, Tine, what I came to Tjanjor for?”
“No, Max, I have quite forgotten.”
“Well, of course, one can’t remember everything! I was there to be married, gentlemen!”
“But,” asked Duclari, “as you are telling us so much, may I ask whether it is true that at Padang you fought so many duels?”
“Yes, a good many, and there was cause for it. I have already told you that at such an outpost the Governor’s favour is for many people the measure by which to adjust their good-will. Most of them therefore were very ill-disposed to me, and this frequently went as far as rudeness. I, on the other hand, was of course irritable. An unacknowledged bow, a taunt about the ‘silliness of a man who wants to fight the General,’ an allusion to my poverty, to my going hungry, to the ‘poor food attached to moral independence’ . . . all this, you will readily understand, embittered me. Many, especially among the officers, knew that the General rather liked to hear that duels were fought, and especially with a man so deeply in disgrace as I was. Maybe therefore they purposely provoked my sensitiveness. I also sometimes fought a duel for another whom I considered wronged. Anyhow, duelling at that time and out there was the order of the day, and it happened more than once that I had two appointments for one morning. Oh, there is a great deal that’s attractive in duelling, especially with swords. You will, however, understand that now I would not do that sort of thing,
