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a honey, — ‘so you think that bulb to have been a precious

one?’

“I saw that I had made a blunder.

“‘What do I know?’ I said, negligently; ‘do I understand

anything of tulips? I only know — as unfortunately it is

our lot to live with prisoners — that for them any pastime

is of value. This poor Mynheer van Baerle amused himself

with this bulb. Well, I think it very cruel to take from him

the only thing that he could have amused himself with.’

“‘But, first of all,’ said my father, ‘we ought to know how

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he has contrived to procure this bulb.’

“I turned my eyes away to avoid my father’s look; but I met

those of Jacob.

“It was as if he had tried to read my thoughts at the bottom

of my heart.

“Some little show of anger sometimes saves an answer. I

shrugged my shoulders, turned my back, and advanced towards

the door.

“But I was kept by something which I heard, although it was

uttered in a very low voice only.

“Jacob said to my father, —

“‘It would not be so difficult to ascertain that.’

“‘How so?’

“‘You need only search his person: and if he has the other

bulbs, we shall find them, as there usually are three

suckers!'”

“Three suckers!” cried Cornelius. “Did you say that I have

three?”

“The word certainly struck me just as much as it does you. I

turned round. They were both of them so deeply engaged in

their conversation that they did not observe my movement.

“‘But,’ said my father, ‘perhaps he has not got his bulbs

about him?’

“‘Then take him down, under some pretext or other and I will

search his cell in the meanwhile.'”

“Halloa, halloa!” said Cornelius. “But this Mr. Jacob of

yours is a villain, it seems.”

“I am afraid he is.”

“Tell me, Rosa,” continued Cornelius, with a pensive air.

“What?”

“Did you not tell me that on the day when you prepared your

borders this man followed you?”

“So he did.”

“That he glided like a shadow behind the elder trees?”

“Certainly.”

“That not one of your movements escaped him?”

“Not one, indeed.”

“Rosa,” said Cornelius, growing quite pale.

“Well?”

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“It was not you he was after.”

“Who else, then?”

“It is not you that he was in love with!”

“But with whom else?”

“He was after my bulb, and is in love with my tulip!”

“You don’t say so! And yet it is very possible,” said Rosa.

“Will you make sure of it?”

“In what manner?”

“Oh, it would be very easy!”

“Tell me.”

“Go to-morrow into the garden; manage matters so that Jacob

may know, as he did the first time, that you are going

there, and that he may follow you. Feign to put the bulb

into the ground; leave the garden, but look through the

keyhole of the door and watch him.”

“Well, and what then?”

“What then? We shall do as he does.”

“Oh!” said Rosa, with a sigh, “you are very fond of your

bulbs.”

“To tell the truth,” said the prisoner, sighing likewise,

“since your father crushed that unfortunate bulb, I feel as

if part of my own self had been paralyzed.”

“Now just hear me,” said Rosa; “will you try something

else?”

“What?”

“Will you accept the proposition of my father?”

“Which proposition?”

“Did not he offer to you tulip bulbs by hundreds?”

“Indeed he did.”

“Accept two or three, and, along with them, you may grow the

third sucker.”

“Yes, that would do very well,” said Cornelius, knitting his

brow; “if your father were alone, but there is that Master

Jacob, who watches all our ways.”

“Well, that is true; but only think! you are depriving

yourself, as I can easily see, of a very great pleasure.”

She pronounced these words with a smile, which was not

altogether without a tinge of irony.

Cornelius reflected for a moment; he evidently was

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struggling against some vehement desire.

“No!” he cried at last, with the stoicism of a Roman of old,