Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip

“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.

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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