Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

you do, let nobody help you, and don’t confide your secret

to any one in the world; do you see, a connoisseur by merely

looking at the bulb would be able to distinguish its value;

and so, my dearest Rosa, be careful in locking up the third

sucker which remains to you.”

“It is still wrapped up in the same paper in which you put

it, and just as you gave it me. I have laid it at the bottom

of my chest under my point lace, which keeps it dry, without

pressing upon it. But good night, my poor captive

gentleman.”

“How? already?”

“It must be, it must be.”

“Coming so late and going so soon.”

“My father might grow impatient not seeing me return, and

that precious lover might suspect a rival.”

Here she listened uneasily.

“What is it?” asked Van Baerle. “I thought I heard

something.”

“What, then?”

“Something like a step, creaking on the staircase.”

“Surely,” said the prisoner, “that cannot be Master Gryphus,

he is always heard at a distance”

“No, it is not my father, I am quite sure, but —- ”

“But?”

“But it might be Mynheer Jacob.”

Rosa rushed toward the staircase, and a door was really

heard rapidly to close before the young damsel had got down

the first ten steps.

Cornelius was very uneasy about it, but it was after all

only a prelude to greater anxieties.

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The flowing day passed without any remarkable incident.

Gryphus made his three visits, and discovered nothing. He

never came at the same hours as he hoped thus to discover

the secrets of the prisoner. Van Baerle, therefore, had

devised a contrivance, a sort of pulley, by means of which

he was able to lower or to raise his jug below the ledge of

tiles and stone before his window. The strings by which this

was effected he had found means to cover with that moss

which generally grows on tiles, or in the crannies of the

walls.

Gryphus suspected nothing, and the device succeeded for

eight days. One morning, however, when Cornelius, absorbed

in the contemplation of his bulb, from which a germ of

vegetation was already peeping forth, had not heard old

Gryphus coming upstairs as a gale of wind was blowing which

shook the whole tower, the door suddenly opened.

Gryphus, perceiving an unknown and consequently a forbidden

object in the hands of his prisoner, pounced upon it with

the same rapidity as the hawk on its prey.

As ill luck would have it, his coarse, hard hand, the same

which he had broken, and which Cornelius van Baerle had set

so well, grasped at once in the midst of the jug, on the

spot where the bulb was lying in the soil.

“What have you got here?” he roared. “Ah! have I caught

you?” and with this he grabbed in the soil.

“I? nothing, nothing,” cried Cornelius, trembling.

“Ah! have I caught you? a jug and earth in it There is some

criminal secret at the bottom of all this.”

“Oh, my good Master Gryphus,” said Van Baerle, imploringly,

and anxious as the partridge robbed of her young by the

reaper.

In fact, Gryphus was beginning to dig the soil with his

crooked fingers.

“Take care, sir, take care,” said Cornelius, growing quite

pale.

“Care of what? Zounds! of what?” roared the jailer.

“Take care, I say, you will crush it, Master Gryphus.”

And with a rapid and almost frantic movement he snatched the

jug from the hands of Gryphus, and hid it like a treasure

under his arms.

But Gryphus, obstinate, like an old man, and more and more

convinced that he was discovering here a conspiracy against

the Prince of Orange, rushed up to his prisoner, raising his

stick; seeing, however, the impassible resolution of the

captive to protect his flower-pot he was convinced that

Cornelius trembled much less for his head than for his jug.

He therefore tried to wrest it from him by force.

“Halloa!” said the jailer, furious, “here, you see, you are

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rebelling.”

“Leave me my tulip,” cried Van Baerle.