there are such things as family and one’s native country.”
“Listen to the captain, the defender of his country, with the nice sound in his voice!”
“There is such a thing as family. Not only with me, because my children are still young, as Paul has been trying to explain, but everywhere, everywhere. I feel that you are my sister, even though I didn’t see you for twenty years. I did not recognize you at once, perhaps; perhaps I have not quite got you back yet: when I think of Constance, I always think of my little sister who used to play in the river at Buitenzorg. . . .”
“Oh, Gerrit, don’t begin about my bare feet again!” said Constance, raising her finger.
“But I feel that you are not a stranger, that there is a bond between us, a relationship, something almost mystical. . . .”
“Oh, I say, what a poetic captain of hussars!” cried Paul. “Once he lets himself go . . .!”
“And country, one’s native country,” Gerrit continued, impetuously, “there is such a thing as one’s country: I feel it in me, Paul, you sceptic and philosopher, old before your time; I feel it in me, not as something poetical and mystical, my boy, like the family-feeling, but as something quite simple, when I ride at the head of my squadron; I feel it as something big and primitive and not at all complex, when I escort my Queen; I feel that there exists for me a land where I was born, out of which I have grown . . .”
