第 21 页

"Rosa, Rosa, I don't know to what wonder under the sun Ishall compare you."

"Compare me to the black tulip, and I promise you I shallfeel very much flattered. Good night, then, till we meetagain, Mynheer Cornelius."

"Oh, say 'Good night, my friend.'"

"Good night, my friend," said Rosa, a little consoled.

"Say, 'My very dear friend.'"

"Oh, my friend -- "

"Very dear friend, I entreat you, say 'very dear,' Rosa,very dear."

"Very dear, yes, very dear," said Rosa, with a beatingheart, beyond herself with happiness.

"And now that you have said 'very dear,' dear Rosa, say also'most happy': say 'happier and more blessed than ever manwas under the sun.' I only lack one thing, Rosa."

"And that is?"

"Your cheek, -- your fresh cheek, your soft, rosy cheek. Oh,Rosa, give it me of your own free will, and not by chance.Ah!"

The prisoner's prayer ended in a sigh of ecstasy; his lipsmet those of the maiden, -- not by chance, nor by stratagem,but as Saint-Preux's was to meet the lips of Julie a hundredyears later.

Rosa made her escape.

Cornelius stood with his heart upon his lips, and his faceglued to the wicket in the door.

He was fairly choking with happiness and joy. He opened hiswindow, and gazed long, with swelling heart, at thecloudless vault of heaven, and the moon, which shone likesilver upon the two-fold stream flowing from far beyond thehills. He filled his lungs with the pure, sweet air, whilehis brain dwelt upon thoughts of happiness, and his heartoverflowed with gratitude and religious fervour.

"Oh Thou art always watching from on high, my God," hecried, half prostrate, his glowing eyes fixed upon thestars: "forgive me that I almost doubted Thy existenceduring these latter days, for Thou didst hide Thy facebehind the clouds, and wert for a moment lost to my sight, OThou merciful God, Thou pitying Father everlasting! Butto-day, this evening, and to-night, again I see Thee in allThy wondrous glory in the mirror of Thy heavenly abode, andmore clearly still in the mirror of my grateful heart."

He was well again, the poor invalid; the wretched captivewas free once more.

During part of the night Cornelius, with his heart full ofjoy and delight, remained at his window, gazing at thestars, and listening for every sound.

Then casting a glance from time to time towards the lobby,--

"Down there," he said, "is Rosa, watching like myself, andwaiting from minute to minute; down there, under Rosa'seyes, is the mysterious flower, which lives, which expands,which opens, perhaps Rosa holds in this moment the stem ofthe tulip between her delicate fingers. Touch it gently,Rosa. Perhaps she touches with her lips its expandingchalice. Touch it cautiously, Rosa, your lips are burning.Yes, perhaps at this moment the two objects of my dearestlove caress each other under the eye of Heaven."

At this moment, a star blazed in the southern sky, and shotthrough the whole horizon, falling down, as it were, on thefortress of Loewestein.

Cornelius felt a thrill run through his frame.

"Ah!" he said, "here is Heaven sending a soul to my flower."

And as if he had guessed correctly, nearly at that verymoment the prisoner heard in the lobby a step light as thatof a sylph, and the rustling of a gown, and a well-knownvoice, which said to him, --

"Cornelius, my friend, my very dear friend, and very happyfriend, come, come quickly."

Cornelius darted with one spring from the window to thedoor, his lips met those of Rosa, who told him, with a kiss,--

"It is open, it is black, here it is."

"How! here it is?" exclaimed Cornelius.

"Yes, yes, we ought indeed to run some little risk to give agreat joy; here it is, take it."

And with one hand she raised to the level of the grating adark lantern, which she had lit in the meanwhile, whilstwith the other she held to the same height the miraculoustulip.

Cornelius uttered a cry, and was nearly fainting.

"Oh!" muttered he, "my God, my God, Thou dost reward me formy innocence and my captivity, as Thou hast allowed two suchflowers to grow at the grated window of my prison!"

The tulip was beautiful, splendid, magnificent; its stem wasmore than eighteen inches high; it rose from out of fourgreen leaves, which were as smooth and straight as ironlance-heads; the whole of the flower was as black andshining as jet.

"Rosa," said Cornelius, almost gasping, "Rosa, there is notone moment to lose in writing the letter."

"It is written, my dearest Cornelius," said Rosa.

"Is it, indeed?"

"Whilst the tulip opened I wrote it myself, for I did notwish to lose a moment. Here is the letter, and tell mewhether you approve of it."

Cornelius took the letter, and read, in a handwriting whichwas much improved even since the last little note he hadreceived from Rosa, as follows: --

"Mynheer President, -- The black tulip is about to open,perhaps in ten minutes. As soon as it is open, I shall senda messenger to you, with the request that you will come andfetch it in person from the fortress at Loewestein. I am thedaughter of the jailer, Gryphus, almost as much of a captiveas the prisoners of my father. I cannot, therefore, bring toyou this wonderful flower. This is the reason why I beg youto come and fetch it yourself.

"It is my wish that it should be called Rosa Barlaensis.

"It has opened; it is perfectly black; come, MynheerPresident, come.

"I have the honour to be your humble servant,

"Rosa Gryphus.

"That's it, dear Rosa, that's it. Your letter is admirable!I could not have written it with such beautiful simplicity.You will give to the committee all the information that willbe required of you. They will then know how the tulip hasbeen grown, how much care and anxiety, and how manysleepless nights, it has cost. But for the present not aminute must be lost. The messenger! the messenger!"

"What's the name of the President?"

"Give me the letter, I will direct it. Oh, he is very wellknown: it is Mynheer van Systens, the burgomaster ofHaarlem; give it to me, Rosa, give it to me."

And with a trembling hand Cornelius wrote the address, --

"To Mynheer Peter van Systens, Burgomaster, and President ofthe Horticultural Society of Haarlem."

"And now, Rosa, go, go," said Cornelius, "and let us implorethe protection of God, who has so kindly watched over usuntil now."

Chapter 23

The Rival

And in fact the poor young people were in great need of protection.

They had never been so near the destruction of their hopesas at this moment, when they thought themselves certain oftheir fulfilment.

The reader cannot but have recognized in Jacob our oldfriend, or rather enemy, Isaac Boxtel, and has guessed, nodoubt, that this worthy had followed from the Buytenhof toLoewestein the object of his love and the object of hishatred, -- the black tulip and Cornelius van Baerle.

What no one but a tulip-fancier, and an envioustulip-fancier, could have discovered, -- the existence ofthe bulbs and the endeavours of the prisoner, -- jealousyhad enabled Boxtel, if not to discover, at least to guess.

We have seen him, more successful under the name of Jacobthan under that of Isaac, gain the friendship of Gryphus,which for several months he cultivated by means of the bestGenievre ever distilled from the Texel to Antwerp, and helulled the suspicion of the jealous turnkey by holding outto him the flattering prospect of his designing to marryRosa.

Besides thus offering a bait to the ambition of the father,he managed, at the same time, to interest his zeal as ajailer, picturing to him in the blackest colours the learnedprisoner whom Gryphus had in his keeping, and who, as thesham Jacob had it, was in league with Satan, to thedetriment of his Highness the Prince of Orange.

At first he had also made some way with Rosa; not, indeed,in her affections, but inasmuch as, by talking to her ofmarriage and of love, he had evaded all the suspicions whichhe might otherwise have excited.

We have seen how his imprudence in following Rosa into thegarden had unmasked him in the eyes of the young damsel, andhow the instinctive fears of Cornelius had put the twolovers on their guard against him.

The reader will remember that the first cause of uneasinesswas given to the prisoner by the rage of Jacob when Gryphuscrushed the first bulb. In that moment Boxtel's exasperationwas the more fierce, as, though suspecting that Corneliuspossessed a second bulb, he by no means felt sure of it.

From that moment he began to dodge the steps of Rosa, notonly following her to the garden, but also to the lobbies.

Only as this time he followed her in the night, andbare-footed, he was neither seen nor heard except once, whenRosa thought she saw something like a shadow on thestaircase.

Her discovery, however, was made too late, as Boxtel hadheard from the mouth of the prisoner himself that a secondbulb existed.

Taken in by the stratagem of Rosa, who had feigned to put itin the ground, and entertaining no doubt that this littlefarce had been played in order to force him to betrayhimself, he redoubled his precaution, and employed everymeans suggested by his crafty nature to watch the otherswithout being watched himself.

He saw Rosa conveying a large flower-pot of whiteearthenware from her father's kitchen to her bedroom. He sawRosa washing in pails of water her pretty little hands,begrimed as they were with the mould which she had handled,to give her tulip the best soil possible.

And at last he hired, just opposite Rosa's window, a littleattic, distant enough not to allow him to be recognized withthe naked eye, but sufficiently near to enable him, with thehelp of his telescope, to watch everything that was going onat the Loewestein in Rosa's room, just as at Dort he hadwatched the dry-room of Cornelius.

He had not been installed more than three days in his atticbefore all his doubts were removed.

From morning to sunset the flower-pot was in the window,and, like those charming female figures of Mieris andMetzys, Rosa appeared at that window as in a frame, formedby the first budding sprays of the wild vine and thehoneysuckle encircling her window.

Rosa watched the flower-pot with an interest which betrayedto Boxtel the real value of the object enclosed in it.

This object could not be anything else but the second bulb,that is to say, the quintessence of all the hopes of theprisoner.

When the nights threatened to be too cold, Rosa took in theflower-pot.

Well, it was then quite evident she was following theinstructions of Cornelius, who was afraid of the bulb beingkilled by frost.

When the sun became too hot, Rosa likewise took in the potfrom eleven in the morning until two in the afternoon.

Another proof: Cornelius was afraid lest the soil shouldbecome too dry.

But when the first leaves peeped out of the earth Boxtel wasfully convinced; and his telescope left him no longer in anyuncertainty before they had grown one inch in height.

Cornelius possessed two bulbs, and the second was intrustedto the love and care of Rosa.

For it may well be imagined that the tender secret of thetwo lovers had not escaped the prying curiosity of Boxtel.

The question, therefore, was how to wrest the second bulbfrom the care of Rosa.

Certainly this was no easy task.

Rosa watched over her tulip as a mother over her child, or adove over her eggs.

Rosa never left her room during the day, and, more thanthat, strange to say, she never left it in the evening.

For seven days Boxtel in vain watched Rosa; she was alwaysat her post.

This happened during those seven days which made Corneliusso unhappy, depriving him at the same time of all news ofRosa and of his tulip.

Would the coolness between Rosa and Cornelius last for ever?

This would have made the theft much more difficult thanMynheer Isaac had at first expected.

We say the theft, for Isaac had simply made up his mind tosteal the tulip; and as it grew in the most profoundsecrecy, and as, moreover, his word, being that of arenowned tulip-grower, would any day be taken against thatof an unknown girl without any knowledge of horticulture, oragainst that of a prisoner convicted of high treason, heconfidently hoped that, having once got possession of thebulb, he would be certain to obtain the prize; and then thetulip, instead of being called Tulipa nigra Barlaensis,would go down to posterity under the name of Tulipa nigraBoxtellensis or Boxtellea.

Mynheer Isaac had not yet quite decided which of these twonames he would give to the tulip, but, as both meant thesame thing, this was, after all, not the important point.

The point was to steal the tulip. But in order that Boxtelmight steal the tulip, it was necessary that Rosa shouldleave her room.

Great therefore was his joy when he saw the usual eveningmeetings of the lovers resumed.

He first of all took advantage of Rosa's absence to makehimself fully acquainted with all the peculiarities of thedoor of her chamber. The lock was a double one and in goodorder, but Rosa always took the key with her.

Boxtel at first entertained an idea of stealing the key, butit soon occurred to him, not only that it would beexceedingly difficult to abstract it from her pocket, butalso that, when she perceived her loss, she would not leaveher room until the lock was changed, and then Boxtel's firsttheft would be useless.

He thought it, therefore, better to employ a differentexpedient. He collected as many keys as he could, and triedall of them during one of those delightful hours which Rosaand Cornelius passed together at the grating of the cell.

Two of the keys entered the lock, and one of them turnedround once, but not the second time.

There was, therefore, only a little to be done to this key.

Boxtel covered it with a slight coat of wax, and when hethus renewed the experiment, the obstacle which preventedthe key from being turned a second time left its impressionon the wax.

It cost Boxtel two days more to bring his key to perfection,with the aid of a small file.

Rosa's door thus opened without noise and withoutdifficulty, and Boxtel found himself in her room alone withthe tulip.

The first guilty act of Boxtel had been to climb over a wallin order to dig up the tulip; the second, to introducehimself into the dry-room of Cornelius, through an openwindow; and the third, to enter Rosa's room by means of afalse key.