The old princess was awaiting the resident in the front-verandah. Her dignified features wore a serene expression and betrayed no trace of what was raging within her. She motioned the resident to a chair; and the conversation opened with a few ordinary phrases. Then four servants approached in a crouching posture: one with a bottle-stand; the second with a tray full of glasses; the third with a silver ice-pail full of broken ice; the fourth salaamed, without carrying anything. The princess asked the resident what he would drink; and he replied that he would like a whisky-and-soda. The fourth servant came crouching through the other three to prepare the drink, poured in the measure of whisky, opened the bottle of soda-water with a report as of a gun and dropped into the tumbler a lump of ice the size of a small glacier. Not another word was said. The resident waited for the drink to grow cold; and the four servants crouched away. Then at last Van Oudijck spoke and asked if he might speak to her in entire confidence, if he could say what he had in his mind. She begged him, civilly, to do so. And in his firm but hushed voice he told her, in Malay, in very courteous sentences, full of friendliness and flowery politeness, how great and exalted his love had been for the pangéran and still was for that prince's glorious house, although he, Van Oudijck, to his intense regret, had been obliged to act counter to that love, because his duty commanded him so to act. And he asked her--presuming that it was possible for her, as a mother--to bear him no grudge for this exercise of his duty; he asked her, on the contrary, to show a motherly feeling for him, the European official, who had loved the pangéran as a father, and to cooperate with him, the official--she, the mother of the regent--by employing her great influence for the happiness and welfare of the population. Sunario had a tendency, in his piety and his remote gaze at things invisible, to forget the actual realities that lay before his eyes. Well, he, the resident, was asking her, the powerful, influential mother, to cooperate with him in ways which Sunario overlooked, to cooperate with him in love and unity. And, in his elegant Malay, he opened his heart to her entirely, describing the turmoil which for days and days had been seething among the inhabitants, like an evil poison which could not do other than make them wicked and drunk and would probably lead to things, to acts, which were bound to have lamentable results. He made her feel his unspoken view that the government would be the stronger, that a terrible punishment would overtake all who should prove guilty, high and low alike. But his language remained exceedingly cautious and his speech respectful, as of a son addressing a mother. She, though she understood him, valued the tactful grace of his manner; and the flowery depth and earnestness of his language made him rise in her esteem and almost surprised her ... in a low Hollander,