those “pressures” would melt away under his hand. But of this, of course, there could now be no question. Havelaar’s labour was harder than labour: he waited!
He waited. At last he sent in another request for an audience. He was answered that His Excellency could not receive him because he was entirely occupied with the preparations for his approaching departure.
Max recommended himself to the favourable consideration of His Excellency for half an hour’s audience, as soon as there should be a small space of time between two “pressures.”
At last he learnt that His Excellency was to depart next day! This was a thunderbolt to him.
Still ever he held on with convulsive desperation to the belief that the retiring Governor-General was an honest man, and . . . had been deceived. A quarter of an hour would have been sufficient to prove the justice of his cause, and it seemed that this quarter of an hour was going to be refused him.
I find among Havelaar’s papers the draft of a letter he seems to have written the retiring Governor-General the last night before that high official’s departure for the mother-country. In the margin there is a pencil note: “not exact,” from which I conclude that in copying out the letter he must have altered some phrases. I draw attention to this, so that, from an absence of literal agreement of this document with the letter, a doubt may not arise of the authenticity of the other official papers of which I stated the contents, all of which are signed by a strange hand as certified copies. Perhaps the man to whom this letter was addressed may wish to publish the entirely exact text. One might then see by comparison to what extent Havelaar had deviated from his draft. In essence correct, the context was as follows:
“Excellency! My request made by official application of the 28th February, for an audience in connection with the affairs of Lebak, has been without result.
