Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

Orangists.

“Stop,” replied the Count, “there you at once ask me more

than I can tell you. I was told, ‘Guard the prison,’ and I

guard it. You, gentlemen, who are almost military men

yourselves, you are aware that an order must never be

gainsaid.”

“But this order has been given to you that the traitors may

be enabled to leave the town.”

“Very possibly, as the traitors are condemned to exile,”

replied Tilly.

“But who has given this order?”

“The States, to be sure!”

“The States are traitors.”

“I don’t know anything about that!”

“And you are a traitor yourself!”

“I?”

“Yes, you.”

“Well, as to that, let us understand each other gentlemen.

Whom should I betray? The States? Why, I cannot betray them,

whilst, being in their pay, I faithfully obey their orders.”

As the Count was so indisputably in the right that it was

impossible to argue against him, the mob answered only by

redoubled clamour and horrible threats, to which the Count

opposed the most perfect urbanity.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “uncock your muskets, one of them may

go off by accident; and if the shot chanced to wound one of

my men, we should knock over a couple of hundreds of yours,

for which we should, indeed, be very sorry, but you even

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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

more so; especially as such a thing is neither contemplated

by you nor by myself.”

“If you did that,” cried the burghers, “we should have a pop

at you, too.”

“Of course you would; but suppose you killed every man Jack

of us, those whom we should have killed would not, for all

that, be less dead.”

“Then leave the place to us, and you will perform the part

of a good citizen.”

“First of all,” said the Count, “I am not a citizen, but an

officer, which is a very different thing; and secondly, I am

not a Hollander, but a Frenchman, which is more different

still. I have to do with no one but the States, by whom I am

paid; let me see an order from them to leave the place to

you, and I shall only be too glad to wheel off in an

instant, as I am confoundedly bored here.”

“Yes, yes!” cried a hundred voices; the din of which was

immediately swelled by five hundred others; “let us march to

the Town-hall; let us go and see the deputies! Come along!

come along!”

“That’s it,” Tilly muttered between his teeth, as he saw the

most violent among the crowd turning away; “go and ask for a

meanness at the Town-hall, and you will see whether they

will grant it; go, my fine fellows, go!”

The worthy officer relied on the honour of the magistrates,

who, on their side, relied on his honour as a soldier.

“I say, Captain,” the first lieutenant whispered into the

ear of the Count, “I hope the deputies will give these

madmen a flat refusal; but, after all, it would do no harm

if they would send us some reinforcement.”

In the meanwhile, John de Witt, whom we left climbing the

stairs, after the conversation with the jailer Gryphus and

his daughter Rosa, had reached the door of the cell, where

on a mattress his brother Cornelius was resting, after

having undergone the preparatory degrees of the torture. The

sentence of banishment having been pronounced, there was no

occasion for inflicting the torture extraordinary.

Cornelius was stretched on his couch, with broken wrists and

crushed fingers. He had not confessed a crime of which he

was not guilty; and now, after three days of agony, he once

more breathed freely, on being informed that the judges,

from whom he had expected death, were only condemning him to

exile.

Endowed with an iron frame and a stout heart, how would he

have disappointed his enemies if they could only have seen,

in the dark cell of the Buytenhof, his pale face lit up by

the smile of the martyr, who forgets the dross of this earth

after having obtained a glimpse of the bright glory of

heaven.

The warden, indeed, had already recovered his full strength,

much more owing to the force of his own strong will than to