Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

Then suddenly Van Baerle felt gentle hands raising him, and

soon stood on his feet again, although trembling a little.

He looked around him. There was some one by his side,

reading a large parchment, sealed with a huge seal of red

wax.

And the same sun, yellow and pale, as it behooves a Dutch

sun to be, was shining in the skies; and the same grated

window looked down upon him from the Buytenhof; and the same

rabble, no longer yelling, but completely thunderstruck,

were staring at him from the streets below.

Van Baerle began to be sensible to what was going on around

him.

His Highness, William, Prince of Orange, very likely afraid

that Van Baerle’s blood would turn the scale of judgment

against him, had compassionately taken into consideration

his good character, and the apparent proofs of his

innocence.

His Highness, accordingly, had granted him his life.

Cornelius at first hoped that the pardon would be complete,

and that he would be restored to his full liberty and to his

flower borders at Dort.

But Cornelius was mistaken. To use an expression of Madame

de Sevigne, who wrote about the same time, “there was a

postscript to the letter;” and the most important part of

the letter was contained in the postscript.

In this postscript, William of Orange, Stadtholder of

Holland, condemned Cornelius van Baerle to imprisonment for

life. He was not sufficiently guilty to suffer death, but he

was too much so to be set at liberty.

Cornelius heard this clause, but, the first feeling of

vexation and disappointment over, he said to himself, —

“Never mind, all this is not lost yet; there is some good in

this perpetual imprisonment; Rosa will be there, and also my

three bulbs of the black tulip are there.”

But Cornelius forgot that the Seven Provinces had seven

prisons, one for each, and that the board of the prisoner is

anywhere else less expensive than at the Hague, which is a

capital.

His Highness, who, as it seems, did not possess the means to

feed Van Baerle at the Hague, sent him to undergo his

perpetual imprisonment at the fortress of Loewestein, very

near Dort, but, alas! also very far from it; for Loewestein,

as the geographers tell us, is situated at the point of the

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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

islet which is formed by the confluence of the Waal and the

Meuse, opposite Gorcum.

Van Baerle was sufficiently versed in the history of his

country to know that the celebrated Grotius was confined in

that castle after the death of Barneveldt; and that the

States, in their generosity to the illustrious publicist,

jurist, historian, poet, and divine, had granted to him for

his daily maintenance the sum of twenty-four stivers.

“I,” said Van Baerle to himself, “I am worth much less than

Grotius. They will hardly give me twelve stivers, and I

shall live miserably; but never mind, at all events I shall

live.”

Then suddenly a terrible thought struck him.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “how damp and misty that part of the

country is, and the soil so bad for the tulips! And then

Rosa will not be at Loewestein!”

Chapter 13

What was going on all this Time in the Mind of one of the Spectators

Whilst Cornelius was engaged with his own thoughts, a coach

had driven up to the scaffold. This vehicle was for the

prisoner. He was invited to enter it, and he obeyed.

His last look was towards the Buytenhof. He hoped to see at

the window the face of Rosa, brightening up again.

But the coach was drawn by good horses, who soon carried Van

Baerle away from among the shouts which the rabble roared in

honour of the most magnanimous Stadtholder, mixing with it a

spice of abuse against the brothers De Witt and the godson

of Cornelius, who had just now been saved from death.

This reprieve suggested to the worthy spectators remarks

such as the following: —

“It’s very fortunate that we used such speed in having

justice done to that great villain John, and to that little

rogue Cornelius, otherwise his Highness might have snatched