Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

the people. When a crowd is once in the humour to cheer, it

is just the same as when it begins to hiss. It never knows

when to stop.

It therefore, in the first place, cheered Van Systens and

his nosegay, then the corporation, then followed a cheer for

the people; and, at last, and for once with great justice,

there was one for the excellent music with which the

gentlemen of the town councils generously treated the

assemblage at every halt.

Every eye was looking eagerly for the heroine of the

festival, — that is to say, the black tulip, — and for its

hero in the person of the one who had grown it.

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In case this hero should make his appearance after the

address we have seen worthy Van Systens at work on so

conscientiously, he would not fail to make as much of a

sensation as the Stadtholder himself.

But the interest of the day’s proceedings for us is centred

neither in the learned discourse of our friend Van Systens,

however eloquent it might be, nor in the young dandies,

resplendent in their Sunday clothes, and munching their

heavy cakes; nor in the poor young peasants, gnawing smoked

eels as if they were sticks of vanilla sweetmeat; neither is

our interest in the lovely Dutch girls, with red cheeks and

ivory bosoms; nor in the fat, round mynheers, who had never

left their homes before; nor in the sallow, thin travellers

from Ceylon or Java; nor in the thirsty crowds, who quenched

their thirst with pickled cucumbers; — no, so far as we are

concerned, the real interest of the situation, the

fascinating, dramatic interest, is not to be found here.

Our interest is in a smiling, sparkling face to be seen amid

the members of the Horticultural Committee; in the person

with a flower in his belt, combed and brushed, and all clad

in scarlet, — a colour which makes his black hair and

yellow skin stand out in violent contrast.

This hero, radiant with rapturous joy, who had the

distinguished honour of making the people forget the speech

of Van Systens, and even the presence of the Stadtholder,

was Isaac Boxtel, who saw, carried on his right before him,

the black tulip, his pretended daughter; and on his left, in

a large purse, the hundred thousand guilders in glittering

gold pieces, towards which he was constantly squinting,

fearful of losing sight of them for one moment.

Now and then Boxtel quickened his step to rub elbows for a

moment with Van Systens. He borrowed a little importance

from everybody to make a kind of false importance for

himself, as he had stolen Rosa’s tulip to effect his own

glory, and thereby make his fortune.

Another quarter of an hour and the Prince will arrive and

the procession will halt for the last time; after the tulip

is placed on its throne, the Prince, yielding precedence to

this rival for the popular adoration, will take a

magnificently emblazoned parchment, on which is written the

name of the grower; and his Highness, in a loud and audible

tone, will proclaim him to be the discoverer of a wonder;

that Holland, by the instrumentality of him, Boxtel, has

forced Nature to produce a black flower, which shall

henceforth be called Tulipa nigra Boxtellea.

From time to time, however, Boxtel withdrew his eyes for a

moment from the tulip and the purse, timidly looking among

the crowd, for more than anything he dreaded to descry there

the pale face of the pretty Frisian girl.

She would have been a spectre spoiling the joy of the

festival for him, just as Banquo’s ghost did that of

Macbeth.

And yet, if the truth must be told, this wretch, who had

stolen what was the boast of man, and the dowry of a woman,

did not consider himself as a thief. He had so intently

watched this tulip, followed it so eagerly from the drawer

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in Cornelius’s dry-room to the scaffold of the Buytenhof,

and from the scaffold to the fortress of Loewestein; he had

seen it bud and grow in Rosa’s window, and so often warmed