Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

Baerle would not have lost one moment in satisfying his

curiosity and feasting his eyes on the present which he had

received.

But, on the contrary, Cornelius had received the parcel from

the hands of his godfather with every mark of respect, and

put it by with the same respectful manner in a drawer,

stowing it away so that it should not take up too much of

the room which was reserved to his bulbs.

The parcel thus being secreted, Cornelius de Witt got up,

pressed the hand of his godson, and turned towards the door,

Van Baerle seizing the candlestick, and lighting him on his

way down to the street, which was still crowded with people

who wished to see their great fellow citizen getting into

his coach.

Boxtel had not been mistaken in his supposition. The deposit

intrusted to Van Baerle, and carefully locked up by him, was

nothing more nor less than John de Witt’s correspondence

with the Marquis de Louvois, the war minister of the King of

France; only the godfather forbore giving to his godson the

least intimation concerning the political importance of the

secret, merely desiring him not to deliver the parcel to any

one but to himself, or to whomsoever he should send to claim

it in his name.

And Van Baerle, as we have seen, locked it up with his most

precious bulbs, to think no more of it, after his godfather

had left him; very unlike Boxtel, who looked upon this

parcel as a clever pilot does on the distant and scarcely

perceptible cloud which is increasing on its way and which

is fraught with a storm.

Little dreaming of the jealous hatred of his neighbour, Van

Baerle had proceeded step by step towards gaining the prize

offered by the Horticultural Society of Haarlem. He had

progressed from hazel-nut shade to that of roasted coffee,

and on the very day when the frightful events took place at

the Hague which we have related in the preceding chapters,

we find him, about one o’clock in the day, gathering from

the border the young suckers raised from tulips of the

colour of roasted coffee; and which, being expected to

flower for the first time in the spring of 1675, would

undoubtedly produce the large black tulip required by the

Haarlem Society.

On the 20th of August, 1672, at one o’clock, Cornelius was

therefore in his dry-room, with his feet resting on the

foot-bar of the table, and his elbows on the cover, looking

with intense delight on three suckers which he had just

Page 47

Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

detached from the mother bulb, pure, perfect, and entire,

and from which was to grow that wonderful produce of

horticulture which would render the name of Cornelius van

Baerle for ever illustrious.

“I shall find the black tulip,” said Cornelius to himself,

whilst detaching the suckers. “I shall obtain the hundred

thousand guilders offered by the Society. I shall distribute

them among the poor of Dort; and thus the hatred which every

rich man has to encounter in times of civil wars will be

soothed down, and I shall be able, without fearing any harm

either from Republicans or Orangists, to keep as heretofore

my borders in splendid condition. I need no more be afraid

lest on the day of a riot the shopkeepers of the town and

the sailors of the port should come and tear out my bulbs,

to boil them as onions for their families, as they have

sometimes quietly threatened when they happened to remember

my having paid two or three hundred guilders for one bulb.

It is therefore settled I shall give the hundred thousand

guilders of the Haarlem prize to-the poor. And yet —- ”

Here Cornelius stopped and heaved a sigh. “And yet,” he

continued, “it would have been so very delightful to spend

the hundred thousand guilders on the enlargement of my

tulip-bed or even on a journey to the East, the country of

beautiful flowers. But, alas! these are no thoughts for the

present times, when muskets, standards, proclamations, and

beating of drums are the order of the day.”

Van Baerle raised his eyes to heaven and sighed again. Then