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Page 100
Taken in by the stratagem of Rosa, who had feigned to put it
in the ground, and entertaining no doubt that this little
farce had been played in order to force him to betray
himself, he redoubled his precaution, and employed every
means suggested by his crafty nature to watch the others
without being watched himself.
He saw Rosa conveying a large flower-pot of white
earthenware from her father's kitchen to her bedroom. He saw
Rosa 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 little
attic, distant enough not to allow him to be recognized with
the naked eye, but sufficiently near to enable him, with the
help of his telescope, to watch everything that was going on
at the Loewestein in Rosa's room, just as at Dort he had
watched the dry-room of Cornelius.
He had not been installed more than three days in his attic
before all his doubts were removed.
From morning to sunset the flower-pot was in the window,
and, like those charming female figures of Mieris and
Metzys, Rosa appeared at that window as in a frame, formed
by the first budding sprays of the wild vine and the
honeysuckle encircling her window.
Rosa watched the flower-pot with an interest which betrayed
to 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 the
prisoner.
When the nights threatened to be too cold, Rosa took in the
flower-pot.
Well, it was then quite evident she was following the
instructions of Cornelius, who was afraid of the bulb being
killed by frost.
When the sun became too hot, Rosa likewise took in the pot
from eleven in the morning until two in the afternoon.
Another proof: Cornelius was afraid lest the soil should
become too dry.
But when the first leaves peeped out of the earth Boxtel was
fully convinced; and his telescope left him no longer in any
uncertainty before they had grown one inch in height.
Cornelius possessed two bulbs, and the second was intrusted
to the love and care of Rosa.
For it may well be imagined that the tender secret of the
two lovers had not escaped the prying curiosity of Boxtel.
The question, therefore, was how to wrest the second bulb
from the care of Rosa.
Certainly this was no easy task.
Rosa watched over her tulip as a mother over her child, or a
dove over her eggs.
Rosa never left her room during the day, and, more than
that, strange to say, she never left it in the evening.
For seven days Boxtel in vain watched Rosa; she was always
at her post.
This happened during those seven days which made Cornelius
so unhappy, depriving him at the same time of all news of
Rosa and of his tulip.
Would the coolness between Rosa and Cornelius last for ever?
This would have made the theft much more difficult than
Mynheer Isaac had at first expected.
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