a honey, — ‘so you think that bulb to have been a precious
one?’
“I saw that I had made a blunder.
“‘What do I know?’ I said, negligently; ‘do I understand
anything of tulips? I only know — as unfortunately it is
our lot to live with prisoners — that for them any pastime
is of value. This poor Mynheer van Baerle amused himself
with this bulb. Well, I think it very cruel to take from him
the only thing that he could have amused himself with.’
“‘But, first of all,’ said my father, ‘we ought to know how
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he has contrived to procure this bulb.’
“I turned my eyes away to avoid my father’s look; but I met
those of Jacob.
“It was as if he had tried to read my thoughts at the bottom
of my heart.
“Some little show of anger sometimes saves an answer. I
shrugged my shoulders, turned my back, and advanced towards
the door.
“But I was kept by something which I heard, although it was
uttered in a very low voice only.
“Jacob said to my father, —
“‘It would not be so difficult to ascertain that.’
“‘How so?’
“‘You need only search his person: and if he has the other
bulbs, we shall find them, as there usually are three
suckers!'”
“Three suckers!” cried Cornelius. “Did you say that I have
three?”
“The word certainly struck me just as much as it does you. I
turned round. They were both of them so deeply engaged in
their conversation that they did not observe my movement.
“‘But,’ said my father, ‘perhaps he has not got his bulbs
about him?’
“‘Then take him down, under some pretext or other and I will
search his cell in the meanwhile.'”
“Halloa, halloa!” said Cornelius. “But this Mr. Jacob of
yours is a villain, it seems.”
“I am afraid he is.”
“Tell me, Rosa,” continued Cornelius, with a pensive air.
“What?”
“Did you not tell me that on the day when you prepared your
borders this man followed you?”
“So he did.”
“That he glided like a shadow behind the elder trees?”
“Certainly.”
“That not one of your movements escaped him?”
“Not one, indeed.”
“Rosa,” said Cornelius, growing quite pale.
“Well?”
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“It was not you he was after.”
“Who else, then?”
“It is not you that he was in love with!”
“But with whom else?”
“He was after my bulb, and is in love with my tulip!”
“You don’t say so! And yet it is very possible,” said Rosa.
“Will you make sure of it?”
“In what manner?”
“Oh, it would be very easy!”
“Tell me.”
“Go to-morrow into the garden; manage matters so that Jacob
may know, as he did the first time, that you are going
there, and that he may follow you. Feign to put the bulb
into the ground; leave the garden, but look through the
keyhole of the door and watch him.”
“Well, and what then?”
“What then? We shall do as he does.”
“Oh!” said Rosa, with a sigh, “you are very fond of your
bulbs.”
“To tell the truth,” said the prisoner, sighing likewise,
“since your father crushed that unfortunate bulb, I feel as
if part of my own self had been paralyzed.”
“Now just hear me,” said Rosa; “will you try something
else?”
“What?”
“Will you accept the proposition of my father?”
“Which proposition?”
“Did not he offer to you tulip bulbs by hundreds?”
“Indeed he did.”
“Accept two or three, and, along with them, you may grow the
third sucker.”
“Yes, that would do very well,” said Cornelius, knitting his
brow; “if your father were alone, but there is that Master
Jacob, who watches all our ways.”
“Well, that is true; but only think! you are depriving
yourself, as I can easily see, of a very great pleasure.”
She pronounced these words with a smile, which was not
altogether without a tinge of irony.
Cornelius reflected for a moment; he evidently was
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struggling against some vehement desire.
“No!” he cried at last, with the stoicism of a Roman of old,