________________________________________________
_ Van Baerle, led by four guards, who pushed their way through the crowd,
sidled up to the black tulip, towards which his gaze was attracted with
increasing interest the nearer he approached to it.
He saw it at last, that unique flower, which he was to see once and no
more. He saw it at the distance of six paces, and was delighted with its
perfection and gracefulness; he saw it surrounded by young and beautiful
girls, who formed, as it were, a guard of honour for this queen of
excellence and purity. And yet, the more he ascertained with his own
eyes the perfection of the flower, the more wretched and miserable he
felt. He looked all around for some one to whom he might address
only one question, but his eyes everywhere met strange faces, and the
attention of all was directed towards the chair of state, on which the
Stadtholder had seated himself.
William rose, casting a tranquil glance over the enthusiastic crowd,
and his keen eyes rested by turns on the three extremities of a triangle
formed opposite to him by three persons of very different interests and
feelings.
At one of the angles, Boxtel, trembling with impatience, and quite
absorbed in watching the Prince, the guilders, the black tulip, and the
crowd.
At the other, Cornelius, panting for breath, silent, and his attention,
his eyes, his life, his heart, his love, quite concentrated on the black
tulip.
And thirdly, standing on a raised step among the maidens of Haarlem,
a beautiful Frisian girl, dressed in fine scarlet woollen cloth,
embroidered with silver, and covered with a lace veil, which fell in
rich folds from her head-dress of gold brocade; in one word, Rosa,
who, faint and with swimming eyes, was leaning on the arm of one of the
officers of William.
The Prince then slowly unfolded the parchment, and said, with a calm
clear voice, which, although low, made itself perfectly heard amidst
the respectful silence, which all at once arrested the breath of fifty
thousand spectators.--
"You know what has brought us here?
"A prize of one hundred thousand guilders has been promised to whosoever
should grow the black tulip.
"The black tulip has been grown; here it is before your eyes, coming
up to all the conditions required by the programme of the Horticultural
Society of Haarlem.
"The history of its production, and the name of its grower, will be
inscribed in the book of honour of the city.
"Let the person approach to whom the black tulip belongs."
In pronouncing these words, the Prince, to judge of the effect they
produced, surveyed with his eagle eye the three extremities of the
triangle.
He saw Boxtel rushing forward. He saw Cornelius make an involuntary
movement; and lastly he saw the officer who was taking care of Rosa
lead, or rather push her forward towards him.
At the sight of Rosa, a double cry arose on the right and left of the
Prince.
Boxtel, thunderstruck, and Cornelius, in joyful amazement, both
exclaimed,--
"Rosa! Rosa!"
"This tulip is yours, is it not, my child?" said the Prince.
"Yes, Monseigneur," stammered Rosa, whose striking beauty excited a
general murmur of applause.
"Oh!" muttered Cornelius, "she has then belied me, when she said this
flower was stolen from her. Oh! that's why she left Loewestein. Alas!
am I then forgotten, betrayed by her whom I thought my best friend on
earth?"
"Oh!" sighed Boxtel, "I am lost."
"This tulip," continued the Prince, "will therefore bear the name of its
producer, and figure in the catalogue under the title, Tulipa nigra Rosa
Barlaensis, because of the name Van Baerle, which will henceforth be the
name of this damsel."
And at the same time William took Rosa's hand, and placed it in that of
a young man, who rushed forth, pale and beyond himself with joy, to the
foot of the throne saluting alternately the Prince and his bride; and
who with a grateful look to heaven, returned his thanks to the Giver of
all this happiness.
At the same moment there fell at the feet of the President van Systens
another man, struck down by a very different emotion.
Boxtel, crushed by the failure of his hopes, lay senseless on the
ground.
When they raised him, and examined his pulse and his heart, he was quite
dead.
This incident did not much disturb the festival, as neither the Prince
nor the President seemed to mind it much.
Cornelius started back in dismay, when in the thief, in the pretended
Jacob, he recognised his neighbour, Isaac Boxtel, whom, in the innocence
of his heart, he had not for one instant suspected of such a wicked
action.
Then, to the sound of trumpets, the procession marched back without any
change in its order, except that Boxtel was now dead, and that Cornelius
and Rosa were walking triumphantly side by side and hand in hand.
On their arriving at the Hotel de Ville, the Prince, pointing with
his finger to the purse with the hundred thousand guilders, said to
Cornelius,--
"It is difficult to say by whom this money is gained, by you or by Rosa;
for if you have found the black tulip, she has nursed it and brought it
into flower. It would therefore be unjust to consider it as her dowry;
it is the gift of the town of Haarlem to the tulip."
Cornelius wondered what the Prince was driving at. The latter
continued,--
"I give to Rosa the sum of a hundred thousand guilders, which she has
fairly earned, and which she can offer to you. They are the reward of
her love, her courage, and her honesty. As to you, Sir--thanks to Rosa
again, who has furnished the proofs of your innocence----"
And, saying these words, the Prince handed to Cornelius that fly-leaf of
the Bible on which was written the letter of Cornelius de Witt, and in
which the third bulb had been wrapped,--
"As to you, it has come to light that you were imprisoned for a crime
which you had not committed. This means, that you are not only free,
but that your property will be restored to you; as the property of an
innocent man cannot be confiscated. Cornelius van Baerle, you are the
godson of Cornelius de Witt and the friend of his brother John. Remain
worthy of the name you have received from one of them, and of the
friendship you have enjoyed with the other. The two De Witts, wrongly
judged and wrongly punished in a moment of popular error, were two great
citizens, of whom Holland is now proud."
The Prince, after these last words, which contrary to his custom, he
pronounced with a voice full of emotion, gave his hands to the lovers to
kiss, whilst they were kneeling before him.
Then heaving a sigh, he said,--
"Alas! you are very happy, who, dreaming only of what perhaps is the
true glory of Holland, and forms especially her true happiness, do not
attempt to acquire for her anything beyond new colours of tulips."
And, casting a glance towards that point of the compass where France
lay, as if he saw new clouds gathering there, he entered his carriage
and drove off.
Cornelius started on the same day for Dort with Rosa, who sent her
lover's old housekeeper as a messenger to her father, to apprise him of
all that had taken place.
Those who, thanks to our description, have learned the character of old
Gryphus, will comprehend that it was hard for him to become reconciled
to his son-in-law. He had not yet forgotten the blows which he had
received in that famous encounter. To judge from the weals which he
counted, their number, he said, amounted to forty-one; but at last, in
order, as he declared, not to be less generous than his Highness the
Stadtholder, he consented to make his peace.
Appointed to watch over the tulips, the old man made the rudest keeper
of flowers in the whole of the Seven Provinces.
It was indeed a sight to see him watching the obnoxious moths and
butterflies, killing slugs, and driving away the hungry bees.
As he had heard Boxtel's story, and was furious at having been the
dupe of the pretended Jacob, he destroyed the sycamore behind which
the envious Isaac had spied into the garden; for the plot of ground
belonging to him had been bought by Cornelius, and taken into his own
garden.
Rosa, growing not only in beauty, but in wisdom also, after two years
of her married life, could read and write so well that she was able to
undertake by herself the education of two beautiful children which she
had borne in 1674 and 1675, both in May, the month of flowers.
As a matter of course, one was a boy, the other a girl, the former being
called Cornelius, the other Rosa.
Van Baerle remained faithfully attached to Rosa and to his tulips.
The whole of his life was devoted to the happiness of his wife and
the culture of flowers, in the latter of which occupations he was so
successful that a great number of his varieties found a place in the
catalogue of Holland.
The two principal ornaments of his drawing-room were those two leaves
from the Bible of Cornelius de Witt, in large golden frames; one of them
containing the letter in which his godfather enjoined him to burn the
correspondence of the Marquis de Louvois, and the other his own will,
in which he bequeathed to Rosa his bulbs under condition that she should
marry a young man of from twenty-six to twenty-eight years, who loved
her and whom she loved, a condition which was scrupulously fulfilled,
although, or rather because, Cornelius did not die.
And to ward off any envious attempts of another Isaac Boxtel, he wrote
over his door the lines which Grotius had, on the day of his flight,
scratched on the walls of his prison:--
"Sometimes one has suffered so much that he has the right never to be
able to say, 'I am too happy.'"
[THE END]
Alexandre Dumas's novel: Black Tulip
_
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