And in fact the poor young people were in great need of protection.
They had never been so near the destruction of their hopesas at this moment, when they thought themselves certain oftheir fulfilment.
The reader cannot but have recognized in Jacob our oldfriend, or rather enemy, Isaac Boxtel, and has guessed, nodoubt, that this worthy had followed from the Buytenhof toLoewestein the object of his love and the object of hishatred, -- the black tulip and Cornelius van Baerle.
What no one but a tulip-fancier, and an envioustulip-fancier, could have discovered, -- the existence ofthe bulbs and the endeavours of the prisoner, -- jealousyhad enabled Boxtel, if not to discover, at least to guess.
We have seen him, more successful under the name of Jacobthan under that of Isaac, gain the friendship of Gryphus,which for several months he cultivated by means of the bestGenievre ever distilled from the Texel to Antwerp, and helulled the suspicion of the jealous turnkey by holding outto him the flattering prospect of his designing to marryRosa.
Besides thus offering a bait to the ambition of the father,he managed, at the same time, to interest his zeal as ajailer, picturing to him in the blackest colours the learnedprisoner whom Gryphus had in his keeping, and who, as thesham Jacob had it, was in league with Satan, to thedetriment of his Highness the Prince of Orange.
At first he had also made some way with Rosa; not, indeed,in her affections, but inasmuch as, by talking to her ofmarriage and of love, he had evaded all the suspicions whichhe might otherwise have excited.
We have seen how his imprudence in following Rosa into thegarden had unmasked him in the eyes of the young damsel, andhow the instinctive fears of Cornelius had put the twolovers on their guard against him.
The reader will remember that the first cause of uneasinesswas given to the prisoner by the rage of Jacob when Gryphuscrushed the first bulb. In that moment Boxtel's exasperationwas the more fierce, as, though suspecting that Corneliuspossessed a second bulb, he by no means felt sure of it.
From that moment he began to dodge the steps of Rosa, notonly following her to the garden, but also to the lobbies.
Only as this time he followed her in the night, andbare-footed, he was neither seen nor heard except once, whenRosa thought she saw something like a shadow on thestaircase.
Her discovery, however, was made too late, as Boxtel hadheard from the mouth of the prisoner himself that a secondbulb existed.
Taken in by the stratagem of Rosa, who had feigned to put itin the ground, and entertaining no doubt that this littlefarce had been played in order to force him to betrayhimself, he redoubled his precaution, and employed everymeans suggested by his crafty nature to watch the otherswithout being watched himself.
He saw Rosa conveying a large flower-pot of whiteearthenware from her father's kitchen to her bedroom. He sawRosa washing in pails of water her pretty little hands,begrimed as they were with the mould which she had handled,to give her tulip the best soil possible.
And at last he hired, just opposite Rosa's window, a littleattic, distant enough not to allow him to be recognized withthe naked eye, but sufficiently near to enable him, with thehelp of his telescope, to watch everything that was going onat the Loewestein in Rosa's room, just as at Dort he hadwatched the dry-room of Cornelius.
He had not been installed more than three days in his atticbefore all his doubts were removed.
From morning to sunset the flower-pot was in the window,and, like those charming female figures of Mieris andMetzys, Rosa appeared at that window as in a frame, formedby the first budding sprays of the wild vine and thehoneysuckle encircling her window.
Rosa watched the flower-pot with an interest which betrayedto Boxtel the real value of the object enclosed in it.
This object could not be anything else but the second bulb,that is to say, the quintessence of all the hopes of theprisoner.
When the nights threatened to be too cold, Rosa took in theflower-pot.
Well, it was then quite evident she was following theinstructions of Cornelius, who was afraid of the bulb beingkilled by frost.
When the sun became too hot, Rosa likewise took in the potfrom eleven in the morning until two in the afternoon.
Another proof: Cornelius was afraid lest the soil shouldbecome too dry.
But when the first leaves peeped out of the earth Boxtel wasfully convinced; and his telescope left him no longer in anyuncertainty before they had grown one inch in height.
Cornelius possessed two bulbs, and the second was intrustedto the love and care of Rosa.
For it may well be imagined that the tender secret of thetwo lovers had not escaped the prying curiosity of Boxtel.
The question, therefore, was how to wrest the second bulbfrom the care of Rosa.
Certainly this was no easy task.
Rosa watched over her tulip as a mother over her child, or adove over her eggs.
Rosa never left her room during the day, and, more thanthat, strange to say, she never left it in the evening.
For seven days Boxtel in vain watched Rosa; she was alwaysat her post.
This happened during those seven days which made Corneliusso unhappy, depriving him at the same time of all news ofRosa and of his tulip.
Would the coolness between Rosa and Cornelius last for ever
This would have made the theft much more difficult thanMynheer Isaac had at first expected.
We say the theft, for Isaac had simply made up his mind tosteal the tulip; and as it grew in the most profoundsecrecy, and as, moreover, his word, being that of arenowned tulip-grower, would any day be taken against thatof an unknown girl without any knowledge of horticulture, oragainst that of a prisoner convicted of high treason, heconfidently hoped that, having once got possession of thebulb, he would be certain to obtain the prize; and then thetulip, instead of being called Tulipa nigra Barlaensis,would go down to posterity under the name of Tulipa nigraBoxtellensis or Boxtellea.
Mynheer Isaac had not yet quite decided which of these twonames he would give to the tulip, but, as both meant thesame thing, this was, after all, not the important point.
The point was to steal the tulip. But in order that Boxtelmight steal the tulip, it was necessary that Rosa shouldleave her room.
Great therefore was his joy when he saw the usual eveningmeetings of the lovers resumed.
He first of all took advantage of Rosa's absence to makehimself fully acquainted with all the peculiarities of thedoor of her chamber. The lock was a double one and in goodorder, but Rosa always took the key with her.
Boxtel at first entertained an idea of stealing the key, butit soon occurred to him, not only that it would beexceedingly difficult to abstract it from her pocket, butalso that, when she perceived her loss, she would not leaveher room until the lock was changed, and then Boxtel's firsttheft would be useless.
He thought it, therefore, better to employ a differentexpedient. He collected as many keys as he could, and triedall of them during one of those delightful hours which Rosaand Cornelius passed together at the grating of the cell.
Two of the keys entered the lock, and one of them turnedround once, but not the second time.
There was, therefore, only a little to be done to this key.
Boxtel covered it with a slight coat of wax, and when hethus renewed the experiment, the obstacle which preventedthe key from being turned a second time left its impressionon the wax.
It cost Boxtel two days more to bring his key to perfection,with the aid of a small file.
Rosa's door thus opened without noise and withoutdifficulty, and Boxtel found himself in her room alone withthe tulip.
The first guilty act of Boxtel had been to climb over a wallin order to dig up the tulip; the second, to introducehimself into the dry-room of Cornelius, through an openwindow; and the third, to enter Rosa's room by means of afalse key.
Thus envy urged Boxtel on with rapid steps in the career ofcrime.
Boxtel, as we have said, was alone with the tulip.
A common thief would have taken the pot under his arm, andcarried it off.
But Boxtel was not a common thief, and he reflected.
It was not yet certain, although very probable, that thetulip would flower black; if, therefore, he stole it now, henot only might be committing a useless crime, but also thetheft might be discovered in the time which must elapseuntil the flower should open.
He therefore -- as being in possession of the key, he mightenter Rosa's chamber whenever he liked -- thought it betterto wait and to take it either an hour before or afteropening, and to start on the instant to Haarlem, where thetulip would be before the judges of the committee before anyone else could put in a reclamation.
Should any one then reclaim it, Boxtel would in his turncharge him or her with theft.
This was a deep-laid scheme, and quite worthy of its author.
Thus, every evening during that delightful hour which thetwo lovers passed together at the grated window, Boxtelentered Rosa's chamber to watch the progress which the blacktulip had made towards flowering.
On the evening at which we have arrived he was going toenter according to custom; but the two lovers, as we haveseen, only exchanged a few words before Cornelius sent Rosaback to watch over the tulip.
Seeing Rosa enter her room ten minutes after she had leftit, Boxtel guessed that the tulip had opened, or was aboutto open.
During that night, therefore, the great blow was to bestruck. Boxtel presented himself before Gryphus with adouble supply of Genievre, that is to say, with a bottle ineach pocket.
Gryphus being once fuddled, Boxtel was very nearly master ofthe house.
At eleven o'clock Gryphus was dead drunk. At two in themorning Boxtel saw Rosa leaving the chamber; but evidentlyshe held in her arms something which she carried with greatcare.
He did not doubt that this was the black tulip which was inflower.
But what was she going to do with it? Would she set out thatinstant to Haarlem with it
It was not possible that a young girl should undertake sucha journey alone during the night.
Was she only going to show the tulip to Cornelius? This wasmore likely.
He followed Rosa in his stocking feet, walking on tiptoe.
He saw her approach the grated window. He heard her callingCornelius. By the light of the dark lantern he saw the tulipopen, and black as the night in which he was hidden.
He heard the plan concerted between Cornelius and Rosa tosend a messenger to Haarlem. He saw the lips of the loversmeet, and then heard Cornelius send Rosa away.
He saw Rosa extinguish the light and return to her chamber.
Ten minutes after, he saw her leave the room again, and lockit twice.
Boxtel, who saw all this whilst hiding himself on thelanding-place of the staircase above, descended step by stepfrom his story as Rosa descended from hers; so that, whenshe touched with her light foot the lowest step of thestaircase, Boxtel touched with a still lighter hand the lockof Rosa's chamber.
And in that hand, it must be understood, he held the falsekey which opened Rosa's door as easily as did the real one.
And this is why, in the beginning of the chapter, we saidthat the poor young people were in great need of theprotection of God.