Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

will deny, was a very handsome investment.

The headsman, on the other hand, had scarcely anything to do

to earn his hundred guilders. He needed only, as soon as the

execution was over, to allow Mynheer Boxtel to ascend the

scaffold with his servants, to remove the inanimate remains

of his friend.

The thing was, moreover, quite customary among the “faithful

brethren,” when one of their masters died a public death in

the yard of the Buytenhof.

A fanatic like Cornelius might very easily have found

another fanatic who would give a hundred guilders for his

remains.

The executioner also readily acquiesced in the proposal,

making only one condition, — that of being paid in advance.

Boxtel, like the people who enter a show at a fair, might be

disappointed, and refuse to pay on going out.

Boxtel paid in advance, and waited.

After this, the reader may imagine how excited Boxtel was;

with what anxiety he watched the guards, the Recorder, and

the executioner; and with what intense interest he surveyed

the movements of Van Baerle. How would he place himself on

the block? how would he fall? and would he not, in falling,

crush those inestimable bulbs? had not he at least taken

care to enclose them in a golden box, — as gold is the

hardest of all metals?

Every trifling delay irritated him. Why did that stupid

executioner thus lose time in brandishing his sword over the

head of Cornelius, instead of cutting that head off?

But when he saw the Recorder take the hand of the condemned,

and raise him, whilst drawing forth the parchment from his

pocket, — when he heard the pardon of the Stadtholder

publicly read out, — then Boxtel was no more like a human

being; the rage and malice of the tiger, of the hyena, and

of the serpent glistened in his eyes, and vented itself in

his yell and his movements. Had he been able to get at Van

Baerle, he would have pounced upon him and strangled him.

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And so, then, Cornelius was to live, and was to go with him

to Loewestein, and thither to his prison he would take with

him his bulbs; and perhaps he would even find a garden where

the black tulip would flower for him.

Boxtel, quite overcome by his frenzy, fell from the stone

upon some Orangemen, who, like him, were sorely vexed at the

turn which affairs had taken. They, mistaking the frantic

cries of Mynheer Isaac for demonstrations of joy, began to

belabour him with kicks and cuffs, such as could not have

been administered in better style by any prize-fighter on

the other side of the Channel.

Blows were, however, nothing to him. He wanted to run after

the coach which was carrying away Cornelius with his bulbs.

But in his hurry he overlooked a paving-stone in his way,

stumbled, lost his centre of gravity, rolled over to a

distance of some yards, and only rose again, bruised and

begrimed, after the whole rabble of the Hague, with their

muddy feet, had passed over him.

One would think that this was enough for one day, but

Mynheer Boxtel did not seem to think so, as, in addition to

having his clothes torn, his back bruised, and his hands

scratched, he inflicted upon himself the further punishment

of tearing out his hair by handfuls, as an offering to that

goddess of envy who, as mythology teaches us, wears a

head-dress of serpents.

Chapter 14

The Pigeons of Dort

It was indeed in itself a great honour for Cornelius van

Baerle to be confined in the same prison which had once

received the learned master Grotius.

But on arriving at the prison he met with an honour even

greater. As chance would have it, the cell formerly

inhabited by the illustrious Barneveldt happened to be

vacant, when the clemency of the Prince of Orange sent the

tulip-fancier Van Baerle there.

The cell had a very bad character at the castle since the

time when Grotius, by means of the device of his wife, made

escape from it in that famous book-chest which the jailers