real invalid, and shook more violently than a man in the
height of fever.
His servant entered the room; Boxtel hid himself under the
counterpane.
“Oh, sir!” cried the servant, not without some inkling that,
whilst deploring the mishap which had befallen Van Baerle,
he was announcing agreeable news to his master, — “oh, sir!
you do not know, then, what is happening at this moment?”
“How can I know it?” answered Boxtel, with an almost
unintelligible voice.
“Well, Mynheer Boxtel, at this moment your neighbour
Cornelius van Baerle is arrested for high treason.”
“Nonsense!” Boxtel muttered, with a faltering voice; “the
thing is impossible.”
“Faith, sir, at any rate that’s what people say; and,
besides, I have seen Judge van Spennen with the archers
entering the house.”
“Well, if you have seen it with your own eyes, that’s a
different case altogether.”
“At all events,” said the servant, “I shall go and inquire
once more. Be you quiet, sir, I shall let you know all about
it.”
Boxtel contented himself with signifying his approval of the
zeal of his servant by dumb show.
The man went out, and returned in half an hour.
“Oh, sir, all that I told you is indeed quite true.”
“How so?”
“Mynheer van Baerle is arrested, and has been put into a
carriage, and they are driving him to the Hague.”
“To the Hague!”
“Yes, to the Hague, and if what people say is true, it won’t
do him much good.”
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“And what do they say?” Boxtel asked.
“Faith, sir, they say — but it is not quite sure — that by
this hour the burghers must be murdering Mynheer Cornelius
and Mynheer John de Witt.”
“Oh,” muttered, or rather growled Boxtel, closing his eyes
from the dreadful picture which presented itself to his
imagination.
“Why, to be sure,” said the servant to himself, whilst
leaving the room, “Mynheer Isaac Boxtel must be very sick
not to have jumped from his bed on hearing such good news.”
And, in reality, Isaac Boxtel was very sick, like a man who
has murdered another.
But he had murdered his man with a double object; the first
was attained, the second was still to be attained.
Night closed in. It was the night which Boxtel had looked
forward to.
As soon as it was dark he got up.
He then climbed into his sycamore.
He had calculated correctly; no one thought of keeping watch
over the garden; the house and the servants were all in the
utmost confusion.
He heard the clock strike — ten, eleven, twelve.
At midnight, with a beating heart, trembling hands, and a
livid countenance, he descended from the tree, took a
ladder, leaned it against the wall, mounted it to the last
step but one, and listened.
All was perfectly quiet, not a sound broke the silence of
the night; one solitary light, that of the housekeeper, was
burning in the house.
This silence and this darkness emboldened Boxtel; he got
astride the wall, stopped for an instant, and, after having
ascertained that there was nothing to fear, he put his
ladder from his own garden into that of Cornelius, and
descended.
Then, knowing to an inch where the bulbs which were to
produce the black tulip were planted, he ran towards the
spot, following, however, the gravelled walks in order not
to be betrayed by his footprints, and, on arriving at the
precise spot, he proceeded, with the eagerness of a tiger,
to plunge his hand into the soft ground.
He found nothing, and thought he was mistaken.
In the meanwhile, the cold sweat stood on his brow.
He felt about close by it, — nothing.
He felt about on the right, and on the left, — nothing.
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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip
He felt about in front and at the back, — nothing.
He was nearly mad, when at last he satisfied himself that on
that very morning the earth had been disturbed.
In fact, whilst Boxtel was lying in bed, Cornelius had gone
down to his garden, had taken up the mother bulb, and, as we
have seen, divided it into three.