[10] Governor of the Capital, or chief town. [↑]
[11] The Residence of the Governor-General near Batavia. [↑]
[12] Oeser-oeseran = as the hairs are on the head. It means the place where the hairs of an animal meet (also said of the hair of the head). It is rather difficult to explain this peculiar hair vertebra—the oeser-oeseran, a peculiar one—a peculiar whirl in the hair. The Djaksa saw such a peculiar meeting of hairs on the head of little Max, just as some people in Europe look at the lines on your right hand. [↑]
CHAPTER IX.
[CONTINUATION OF STERN’S COMPOSITION.]
Reader, I would give anything to know exactly how long I could let a heroine float in the air, while I described a castle, without exhausting your patience, and causing you to look wearily aside, before the poor creature reached the earth? If my tale demanded such a caper, I should prudently choose a first storey for my point de départ, and a castle of which but little could be said. Once for all, however, I will make you easy on that head:—Havelaar’s house had no storeys at all, and the heroine of my book,—the lovely, faithful, ansprüchlose Tine, a heroine!—never jumped out of the window.
When I ended the foregoing chapter, with a reference to some variation in the next, it was rather a rhetorical artifice, and to make a good ending, than because I meant that the next chapter should only be valuable as a change. A writer is vain as a——man. Slander his mother, or ridicule the colour of his hair, say that he has an Amsterdam accent, such as no Amsterdammer ever had,—perhaps [[154]]he will forgive you these things; but never say anything against him as an author——for this he will not forgive. If you don’t think my book a good one, and you happen to meet me, just act as if we were strangers to each other.
No, even such a chapter “for a change” appears to me, through the magnifying-glass of my vanity as an author, to be most important and indispensable; and if you do not read it, and afterwards feel disappointed with my book, I shall not hesitate to tell you that your not reading it was the cause of your inability to appreciate my book, for the chapter you omitted was just the most essential of all——I therefore—for I am a man and an author—should hold every chapter to be essential which you had passed over with unpardonable readerlike levity. I imagine that your wife asks, “What do you think of that book?” And you say, for instance—[horribile auditu to me]—with the pomp of diction peculiar to married men—
“Humph! so-so.—I don’t know yet.”
Well then, barbarian! read on: what is most important is about to commence. And with trembling lips I look at you, and measure the thickness of the turned leaves——and I look on your face for the reflection of that chapter “that is so important.”——“No,” I say, “he has not yet jumped up——embraced somebody in ecstasy——his wife perhaps——” But you read on. It appears to me that [[155]]he has already had “the important chapter”——you have not jumped up at all, and have embraced nothing——