In the gallery they met the raden-aju, a short, downtrodden little woman, like a whipped dog, a beaten slave. She approached, weeping; she begged, she implored for forgiveness. Van Oudijck told her that the regent refused to speak, for all his threats, that he was silent with an inexplicable but obviously deliberate silence. Then the raden-aju whispered that the regent had consulted a native physician, who had given him a talisman and assured him that, if he only persisted in maintaining complete silence, his enemies would obtain no hold upon him. Terrified, she implored for help, for forgiveness, gathering her children round her as she spoke. After sending for the councillor and enjoining him to keep a strict watch on the regent, the two officials went away. Often though Van Oudijck had encountered the superstition of the Javanese, it always enraged him, as opposed to what he called the laws of nature and life. Yes, nothing but his superstition could induce a Javanese to depart from the correct path of his innate courtliness. Whatever they might now wish to put before him, the regent would remain silent, would persist in the absolute silence prescribed by the physician. In this way he believed himself protected against those whom he considered his enemies. And this preconceived notion of hostility in one whom he would so gladly have regarded as his younger brother and fellow-ruler was what disturbed Van Oudijck most of all. He returned to Labuwangi with Léonie and Doddie. Once at home, he felt for a moment the pleasantness of being back in his own house, an enjoyment of domesticity that always soothed him greatly: the material pleasure of seeing his own bed again, his own writing-table and chair, of drinking his own coffee, made as he was accustomed to have it. These minor amenities put him in a good humour for a little while, but he at once felt all his bitterness awaken when he perceived, under a pile of letters on his desk, the disguised handwritings of a couple of furtive correspondents. Automatically he opened these first and felt sick when he read Léonie's name coupled with that of Theo. Nothing was sacred to those scoundrels: they concocted the most monstrous calumnies, the most unnatural libels, the most loathsome imputations, down to that of what was almost incest. All the filth flung at his wife and son only set them higher in his love, girt them with a greater purity, placed them on an inviolable summit and made him cherish them with a deeper and more fervent affection. But his bitterness, once stirred up, brought back all his mortification. Its actual cause was that he had to propose the Regent of Ngadjiwa's dismissal and did not enjoy the prospect. But this one necessity embittered his whole being, upset his nerves and made him ill. If he could not follow the path which he had determined upon, if life strayed from the possibilities which he, Van Oudijck, had a priori fixed, this reluctance, this rebellion