of wisdom. He was, like most Europeans in India, very pale, which, however, in those regions is in no way considered as evidence of unsatisfactory health, and he had delicate features which bore testimony to some intellectual training. Only there was something cold in his glance, something that reminded one of a table of logarithms, and though in general his appearance was in no way unpleasant or repellent, one could not refrain from the suspicion that his rather large thin nose felt bored in that face where so little happened.
He offered his hand courteously to a lady, assisting her to alight from the carriage, and when she had taken a child, a little fair boy of about three, from a gentleman still inside, they entered the pendoppo. After them came the second gentleman just referred to, and with people acquainted with Java it would have attracted notice that he waited at the carriage door to make the descent easier to an old Javanese baboo. Three servants had themselves managed to get free from the patent leather box that was stuck on to the back of the coach like a young oyster to the back of its mamma.
The gentleman who had descended first had offered his hand to the Regent and to Verbrugge, and they had taken it respectfully; their whole demeanour had made it apparent that they felt themselves in the presence of an important personage. He was the Resident of Bantam, the extensive region of which Lebak is a division, a regency, or, as it is called officially, an assistant-residency.
In reading fictitious stories I have often felt irritated by the little respect the authors paid to the public’s good taste, and this was especially the case whenever they manifested the wish to produce something that was to be considered amusing or burlesque, not to say humorous, a quality which people almost invariably confuse with the comical. They introduce a person speaking, who either does not understand the language or pronounces it badly; for instance one makes a Frenchman say: “I sink ze sree soroughfares are all srown open,” or “ze vidow vants to vait for a vidover.” In the absence of a Frenchman, one takes someone who stammers, or
