“I will tell you in one word,” replied Grenits, “where the mischief lies, it is the abominable opium trade which is at the bottom of all this, which overrules and demoralises everything out here. You heard the head-djaksa’s prosecution? Did you ever see anything more neatly put together? Did you notice how cleverly all the witnesses who might have spoken in Dalima’s favour were got out of the way? Verstork sent to Atjeh, Miss van Gulpendam smuggled away somehow or other, while Mokesuep did not fail to put in an appearance.”
“The brute!” muttered van Rheijn.
“Yes,” continued Grenits, “and if it had not been for our friend August, that poor girl would have been found guilty as so many others have been who have been falsely accused of opium crimes. Just now you asked, Leendert, whether any such thing could possibly happen in Holland. I do not take upon myself to say what may be possible or impossible there; but this one thing I do know, that our whole opium-system is derived from thence, that year by year the opium revenue keeps on rising by several millions; and that thus the passion for opium is, by every possible means, excited to its utmost pitch. I further know that our Government and our Government officials are thus compelled by the authorities at home to support the opium farmers and to wink at all their dirty tricks with their attendant train of fatal consequences. Is it not enough to make one hide one’s head for shame when we come to think that we belong to a nation whose sordid love of money and grasping avarice not only tolerate such a state of things, but actually fosters and encourages it?”
All present shook their heads and sighed; for the words Grenits uttered were the simple truth.
“But,” inquired van Rheijn, “ought we to blame the nation for all this? Ought we not rather to find fault with the Government which countenances such abuses?”
“The Government!” impatiently exclaimed Grenits, “a nation always deserves the Government it has. Yes, of course, it is the Government which issues the orders and which acts; but the nation looks on and—is loud in its praises of a minister who can boast that he makes as much out of the business as can be squeezed from it. It seems to me that the Dutch people have either lost their manliness altogether or else are on the verge of idiocy. It has no eye, no heart for its colonies, no feeling whatever, nothing, only one single thought: ‘that minister balances his budget admirably!’ And then the minister, feeling certain of success and applause, actually in his place in the House allows himself to perpetrate jests which an ordinary individual would be ashamed to utter in a pot-house. Then his friends applaud and the legislature seems to consider his jokes a very pretty exhibition of wit.”
Fortunately, however, at this moment Sidin came in, and his appearance checked the young merchant’s indignant flow of words, a thing which his friends might not have found it easy to do. The Javanese servant held two formidable looking letters in his hand, which he offered to his master.
“By Jove,” cried van Rheijn, “two official letters! I bet you that it is the order to send you to jail.”
Grenits made no reply, but quietly opened one of the letters.
“Only a very commonplace marriage announcement,” said he when he had glanced at the paper; and then, when he had looked at it again, he cried out: