“it would be a weakness, it would be a folly, it would be a
meanness! If I thus give up the only and last resource which
we possess to the uncertain chances of the bad passions of
anger and envy, I should never deserve to be forgiven. No,
Rosa, no; to-morrow we shall come to a conclusion as to the
spot to be chosen for your tulip; you will plant it
according to my instructions; and as to the third sucker,”
— Cornelius here heaved a deep sigh, — “watch over it as a
miser over his first or last piece of gold; as the mother
over her child; as the wounded over the last drop of blood
in his veins; watch over it, Rosa! Some voice within me
tells me that it will be our saving, that it will be a
source of good to us.”
“Be easy, Mynheer Cornelius,” said Rosa, with a sweet
mixture of melancholy and gravity, “be easy; your wishes are
commands to me.”
“And even,” continued Van Baerle, warming more and more with
his subject, “if you should perceive that your steps are
watched, and that your speech has excited the suspicion of
your father and of that detestable Master Jacob, — well,
Rosa, don’t hesitate for one moment to sacrifice me, who am
only still living through you, — me, who have no one in the
world but you; sacrifice me, — don’t come to see me any
more.”
Rosa felt her heart sink within her, and her eyes were
filling with tears.
“Alas!” she said.
“What is it?” asked Cornelius.
“I see one thing.”
“What do you see?”
“I see,” said she, bursting out in sobs, “I see that you
love your tulips with such love as to have no more room in
your heart left for other affections.”
Saying this, she fled.
Cornelius, after this, passed one of the worst nights he
ever had in his life.
Rosa was vexed with him, and with good reason. Perhaps she
would never return to see the prisoner, and then he would
have no more news, either of Rosa or of his tulips.
We have to confess, to the disgrace of our hero and of
floriculture, that of his two affections he felt most
strongly inclined to regret the loss of Rosa; and when, at
about three in the morning, he fell asleep overcome with
fatigue, and harassed with remorse, the grand black tulip
yielded precedence in his dreams to the sweet blue eyes of
the fair maid of Friesland.
Page 105
Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip
Chapter 19
The Maid and the Flower
But poor Rosa, in her secluded chamber, could not have known
of whom or of what Cornelius was dreaming.
From what he had said she was more ready to believe that he
dreamed of the black tulip than of her; and yet Rosa was
mistaken.
But as there was no one to tell her so, and as the words of
Cornelius’s thoughtless speech had fallen upon her heart
like drops of poison, she did not dream, but she wept.
The fact was, that, as Rosa was a high-spirited creature, of
no mean perception and a noble heart, she took a very clear
and judicious view of her own social position, if not of her
moral and physical qualities.
Cornelius was a scholar, and was wealthy, — at least he had
been before the confiscation of his property; Cornelius
belonged to the merchant-bourgeoisie, who were prouder of
their richly emblazoned shop signs than the hereditary
nobility of their heraldic bearings. Therefore, although he
might find Rosa a pleasant companion for the dreary hours of
his captivity, when it came to a question of bestowing his
heart it was almost certain that he would bestow it upon a
tulip, — that is to say, upon the proudest and noblest of
flowers, rather than upon poor Rosa, the jailer’s lowly
child.
Thus Rosa understood Cornelius’s preference of the tulip to
herself, but was only so much the more unhappy therefor.
During the whole of this terrible night the poor girl did
not close an eye, and before she rose in the morning she had