Boxtel could not bring himself to leave the place. He dug up
with his hands more than ten square feet of ground.
At last no doubt remained of his misfortune. Mad with rage,
he returned to his ladder, mounted the wall, drew up the
ladder, flung it into his own garden, and jumped after it.
All at once, a last ray of hope presented itself to his
mind: the seedling bulbs might be in the dry-room; it was
therefore only requisite to make his entry there as he had
done into the garden.
There he would find them, and, moreover, it was not at all
difficult, as the sashes of the dry-room might be raised
like those of a greenhouse. Cornelius had opened them on
that morning, and no one had thought of closing them again.
Everything, therefore, depended upon whether he could
procure a ladder of sufficient length, — one of twenty-five
feet instead of ten.
Boxtel had noticed in the street where he lived a house
which was being repaired, and against which a very tall
ladder was placed.
This ladder would do admirably, unless the workmen had taken
it away.
He ran to the house: the ladder was there. Boxtel took it,
carried it with great exertion to his garden, and with even
greater difficulty raised it against the wall of Van
Baerle’s house, where it just reached to the window.
Boxtel put a lighted dark lantern into his pocket, mounted
the ladder, and slipped into the dry-room.
On reaching this sanctuary of the florist he stopped,
supporting himself against the table; his legs failed him,
his heart beat as if it would choke him. Here it was even
worse than in the garden; there Boxtel was only a
trespasser, here he was a thief.
However, he took courage again: he had not gone so far to
turn back with empty hands.
But in vain did he search the whole room, open and shut all
the drawers, even that privileged one where the parcel which
had been so fatal to Cornelius had been deposited; he found
ticketed, as in a botanical garden, the “Jane,” the “John de
Witt,” the hazel-nut, and the roasted-coffee coloured tulip;
but of the black tulip, or rather the seedling bulbs within
which it was still sleeping, not a trace was found.
And yet, on looking over the register of seeds and bulbs,
which Van Baerle kept in duplicate, if possible even with
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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip
greater exactitude and care than the first commercial houses
of Amsterdam their ledgers, Boxtel read these lines: —
“To-day, 20th of August, 1672, I have taken up the mother
bulb of the grand black tulip, which I have divided into
three perfect suckers.”
“Oh these bulbs, these bulbs!” howled Boxtel, turning over
everything in the dry-room, “where could he have concealed
them?”
Then, suddenly striking his forehead in his frenzy, he
called out, “Oh wretch that I am! Oh thrice fool Boxtel!
Would any one be separated from his bulbs? Would any one
leave them at Dort, when one goes to the Hague? Could one
live far from one’s bulbs, when they enclose the grand black
tulip? He had time to get hold of them, the scoundrel, he
has them about him, he has taken them to the Hague!”
It was like a flash of lightning which showed to Boxtel the
abyss of a uselessly committed crime.
Boxtel sank quite paralyzed on that very table, and on that
very spot where, some hours before, the unfortunate Van
Baerle had so leisurely, and with such intense delight,
contemplated his darling bulbs.
“Well, then, after all,” said the envious Boxtel, — raising
his livid face from his hands in which it had been buried —
“if he has them, he can keep them only as long as he lives,
and —- ”
The rest of this detestable thought was expressed by a
hideous smile.
“The bulbs are at the Hague,” he said, “therefore, I can no
longer live at Dort: away, then, for them, to the Hague! to
the Hague!”
And Boxtel, without taking any notice of the treasures about
him, so entirely were his thoughts absorbed by another