Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

of making him a good citizen. Loving his country better than

he did his disciple, the master had, by the Perpetual Edict,

extinguished the hope which the young Prince might have

entertained of one day becoming Stadtholder. But God laughs

at the presumption of man, who wants to raise and prostrate

the powers on earth without consulting the King above; and

the fickleness and caprice of the Dutch combined with the

terror inspired by Louis XIV., in repealing the Perpetual

Edict, and re-establishing the office of Stadtholder in

favour of William of Orange, for whom the hand of Providence

had traced out ulterior destinies on the hidden map of the

future.

The Grand Pensionary bowed before the will of his fellow

citizens; Cornelius de Witt, however, was more obstinate,

and notwithstanding all the threats of death from the

Orangist rabble, who besieged him in his house at Dort, he

stoutly refused to sign the act by which the office of

Stadtholder was restored. Moved by the tears and entreaties

of his wife, he at last complied, only adding to his

signature the two letters V. C. (Vi Coactus), notifying

thereby that he only yielded to force.

It was a real miracle that on that day he escaped from the

doom intended for him.

John de Witt derived no advantage from his ready compliance

with the wishes of his fellow citizens. Only a few days

after, an attempt was made to stab him, in which he was

severely although not mortally wounded.

This by no means suited the views of the Orange faction. The

life of the two brothers being a constant obstacle to their

plans, they changed their tactics, and tried to obtain by

calumny what they had not been able to effect by the aid of

the poniard.

How rarely does it happen that, in the right moment, a great

man is found to head the execution of vast and noble

designs; and for that reason, when such a providential

concurrence of circumstances does occur, history is prompt

to record the name of the chosen one, and to hold him up to

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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

the admiration of posterity. But when Satan interposes in

human affairs to cast a shadow upon some happy existence, or

to overthrow a kingdom, it seldom happens that he does not

find at his side some miserable tool, in whose ear he has

but to whisper a word to set him at once about his task.

The wretched tool who was at hand to be the agent of this

dastardly plot was one Tyckelaer whom we have already

mentioned, a surgeon by profession.

He lodged an information against Cornelius de Witt, setting

forth that the warden — who, as he had shown by the letters

added to his signature, was fuming at the repeal of the

Perpetual Edict — had, from hatred against William of

Orange, hired an assassin to deliver the new Republic of its

new Stadtholder; and he, Tyckelaer was the person thus

chosen; but that, horrified at the bare idea of the act

which he was asked to perpetrate, he had preferred rather to

reveal the crime than to commit it.

This disclosure was, indeed, well calculated to call forth a

furious outbreak among the Orange faction. The Attorney

General caused, on the 16th of August, 1672, Cornelius de

Witt to be arrested; and the noble brother of John de Witt

had, like the vilest criminal, to undergo, in one of the

apartments of the town prison, the preparatory degrees of

torture, by means of which his judges expected to force from

him the confession of his alleged plot against William of

Orange.

But Cornelius was not only possessed of a great mind, but

also of a great heart. He belonged to that race of martyrs

who, indissolubly wedded to their political convictions as

their ancestors were to their faith, are able to smile on

pain: while being stretched on the rack, he recited with a

firm voice, and scanning the lines according to measure, the

first strophe of the “Justum ac tenacem” of Horace, and,

making no confession, tired not only the strength, but even

the fanaticism, of his executioners.