Note 12 — Chapter XVII · [CONTINUATION OF STERN’S COMPOSITION.]

When this buffalo was slaughtered, Saïdjah was just twelve, and Adinda was wearing ‘sarongs,’ and making figures on them.12 She had already learned to express thoughts in melancholy drawings on her tissue, for she had seen Saïdjah very sad. And Saïdjah’s father was also sad, but his mother still more so; for she had cured the wound in the neck of the faithful animal which had brought her child home unhurt, after having thought, by the news of Adinda’s brothers, that it had been taken away by the tiger. As often as she saw this wound, she thought how far the claws of the tiger, which had entered so deeply into the coarse flesh of the buffalo, would have penetrated into the tender body of her child; and every time she put fresh dressings on the wound, she caressed the buffalo, and spoke kindly to him, that the good faithful animal might know how grateful a mother is.