I have made the conclusion of the story of Saïdyah shorter than I might have done if I had felt inclined to a description of horrors. The reader will note how I dwelt on the account of my hero’s watch under the ketapan, as though I feared the approach of the grievous dénouement, on which aversion made me touch only lightly. And yet this was not my intention when I began to write about Saïdyah. For at the outset I feared that I should need stronger colouring to move the reader with the description of such strange conditions. But little by little I realized that it would be an insult to my public to believe that I ought to have spilt more blood on my picture.
And yet I might have done so, for I have before me documents . . . but no: I will rather make a confession.
Yes, a confession, reader! I do not know whether Saïdyah loved Adinda. Nor whether he went to Batavia. Nor whether he was murdered in the Lampongs with Dutch bayonets. I do not know whether his father succumbed in consequence of the rattan-scourging he received for having left Badoor without a passport. I do not know whether Adinda counted the moons by notches in her rice-block. . . .
All this I do not know!
But I know more than all this. I know and I can prove that there were many Adindas and many Saïdyahs, and that what is fiction in a particular case is truth in general. I have said that I can give the names of persons who, like the parents of Saïdyah and Adinda, were driven out of their country by oppression. It is not my object to give in this work statements such as would be required before a Court of Justice sitting to pronounce a verdict on the manner in which Dutch authority is exercised in India, statements that would
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