The Black Tulip

“Well, then, now as you begin to know how to read you will read all that I write to you of the pangs of jealousy and of absence, won’t you, Rosa?”

“I shall read it, if you write with good big letters.”

Then, as the turn which the conversation took began to make Rosa uneasy, she asked, —

“By the bye, how is your tulip going on?”

“Oh, Rosa, only imagine my joy, this morning I looked at it in the sun, and after having moved the soil aside which covers the bulb, I saw the first sprouting of the leaves. This small germ has caused me a much greater emotion than the order of his Highness which turned aside the sword already raised at the Buytenhof.”

“You hope, then?” said Rosa, smiling.

“Yes, yes, I hope.”

“And I, in my turn, when shall I plant my bulb?”

“Oh, the first favourable day I will tell you; but, whatever you do, let nobody help you, and don’t confide your secret to any one in the world; do you see, a connoisseur by merely looking at the bulb would be able to distinguish its value; and so, my dearest Rosa, be careful in locking up the third sucker which remains to you.”

“It is still wrapped up in the same paper in which you put it, and just as you gave it me. I have laid it at the bottom of my chest under my point lace, which keeps it dry, without pressing upon it. But good night, my poor captive gentleman.”

“How? already?”

“It must be, it must be.”

“Coming so late and going so soon.”

“My father might grow impatient not seeing me return, and that precious lover might suspect a rival.”

Here she listened uneasily.

“What is it?” asked Van Baerle. “I thought I heard something.”

“What, then?”

“Something like a step, creaking on the staircase.”

“Surely,” said the prisoner, “that cannot be Master Gryphus, he is always heard at a distance.”

“No, it is not my father, I am quite sure, but – ”

“But?”

“But it might be Mynheer Jacob.”

Rosa rushed toward the staircase, and a door was really heard rapidly to close before the young damsel had got down the first ten steps.

Cornelius was very uneasy about it, but it was after all only a prelude to greater anxieties.

The flowing day passed without any remarkable incident. Gryphus made his three visits, and discovered nothing. He never came at the same hours as he hoped thus to discover the secrets of the prisoner. Van Baerle, therefore, had devised a contrivance, a sort of pulley, by means of which he was able to lower or to raise his jug below the ledge of tiles and stone before his window. The strings by which this was effected he had found means to cover with that moss which generally grows on tiles, or in the crannies of the walls.

Gryphus suspected nothing, and the device succeeded for eight days. One morning, however, when Cornelius, absorbed in the contemplation of his bulb, from which a germ of vegetation was already peeping forth, had not heard old Gryphus coming upstairs as a gale of wind was blowing which shook the whole tower, the door suddenly opened.

Gryphus, perceiving an unknown and consequently a forbidden object in the hands of his prisoner, pounced upon it with the same rapidity as the hawk on its prey.

As ill luck would have it, his coarse, hard hand, the same which he had broken, and which Cornelius van Baerle had set so well, grasped at once in the midst of the jug, on the spot where the bulb was lying in the soil.

“What have you got here?” he roared. “Ah! have I caught you?” and with this he grabbed in the soil.

“I? nothing, nothing,” cried Cornelius, trembling.

“Ah! have I caught you? a jug and earth in it There is some criminal secret at the bottom of all this.”

“Oh, my good Master Gryphus,” said Van Baerle, imploringly, and anxious as the partridge robbed of her young by the reaper.

In fact, Gryphus was beginning to dig the soil with his crooked fingers.

“Take care, sir, take care,” said Cornelius, growing quite pale.

“Care of what? Zounds! of what?” roared the jailer.

“Take care, I say, you will crush it, Master Gryphus.”

And with a rapid and almost frantic movement he snatched the jug from the hands of Gryphus, and hid it like a treasure under his arms.

But Gryphus, obstinate, like an old man, and more and more convinced that he was discovering here a conspiracy against the Prince of Orange, rushed up to his prisoner, raising his stick; seeing, however, the impassible resolution of the captive to protect his flower-pot he was convinced that Cornelius trembled much less for his head than for his jug.

He therefore tried to wrest it from him by force.

“Halloa!” said the jailer, furious, “here, you see, you are rebelling.”

“Leave me my tulip,” cried Van Baerle.

“Ah, yes, tulip,” replied the old man, “we know well the shifts of prisoners.”

“But I vow to you – ”

“Let go,” repeated Gryphus, stamping his foot, “let go, or I shall call the guard.”

“Call whoever you like, but you shall not have this flower except with my life.”

Gryphus, exasperated, plunged his finger a second time into the soil, and now he drew out the bulb, which certainly looked quite black; and whilst Van Baerle, quite happy to have saved the vessel, did not suspect that the adversary had possessed himself of its precious contents, Gryphus hurled the softened bulb with all his force on the flags, where almost immediately after it was crushed to atoms under his heavy shoe.

Van Baerle saw the work of destruction, got a glimpse of the juicy remains of his darling bulb, and, guessing the cause of the ferocious joy of Gryphus, uttered a cry of agony, which would have melted the heart even of that ruthless jailer who some years before killed Pelisson’s spider.

The idea of striking down this spiteful bully passed like lightning through the brain of the tulip-fancier. The blood rushed to his brow, and seemed like fire in his eyes, which blinded him, and he raised in his two hands the heavy jug with all the now useless earth which remained in it. One instant more, and he would have flung it on the bald head of old Gryphus.

But a cry stopped him; a cry of agony, uttered by poor Rosa, who, trembling and pale, with her arms raised to heaven, made her appearance behind the grated window, and thus interposed between her father and her friend.

Gryphus then understood the danger with which he had been threatened, and he broke out in a volley of the most terrible abuse.