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Page 35
"My dear son, send these people away, and let us be alone
for some minutes."
The younger Cornelius, bowing assent, said aloud, --
"Would you now, sir, please to see my dry-room?"
The dry-room, this pantheon, this sanctum sanctorum of the
tulip-fancier, was, as Delphi of old, interdicted to the
profane uninitiated.
Never had any of his servants been bold enough to set his
foot there. Cornelius admitted only the inoffensive broom of
an old Frisian housekeeper, who had been his nurse, and who
from the time when he had devoted himself to the culture of
tulips ventured no longer to put onions in his stews, for
fear of pulling to pieces and mincing the idol of her foster
child.
At the mere mention of the dry-room, therefore, the servants
who were carrying the lights respectfully fell back.
Cornelius, taking the candlestick from the hands of the
foremost, conducted his godfather into that room, which was
no other than that very cabinet with a glass front into
which Boxtel was continually prying with his telescope.
The envious spy was watching more intently than ever.
First of all he saw the walls and windows lit up.
Then two dark figures appeared.
One of them, tall, majestic, stern, sat down near the table
on which Van Baerle had placed the taper.
In this figure, Boxtel recognised the pale features of
Cornelius de Witt, whose long hair, parted in front, fell
over his shoulders.
De Witt, after having said some few words to Cornelius, the
meaning of which the prying neighbour could not read in the
movement of his lips, took from his breast pocket a white
parcel, carefully sealed, which Boxtel, judging from the
manner in which Cornelius received it, and placed it in one
of the presses, supposed to contain papers of the greatest
importance.
His first thought was that this precious deposit enclosed
some newly imported bulbs from Bengal or Ceylon; but he soon
reflected that Cornelius de Witt was very little addicted to
tulip-growing, and that he only occupied himself with the
affairs of man, a pursuit by far less peaceful and agreeable
than that of the florist. He therefore came to the
conclusion that the parcel contained simply some papers, and
that these papers were relating to politics.
But why should papers of political import be intrusted to
Van Baerle, who not only was, but also boasted of being, an
entire stranger to the science of government, which, in his
opinion, was more occult than alchemy itself?
It was undoubtedly a deposit which Cornelius de Witt,
already threatened by the unpopularity with which his
countrymen were going to honour him, was placing in the
hands of his godson; a contrivance so much the more cleverly
devised, as it certainly was not at all likely that it
should be searched for at the house of one who had always
stood aloof from every sort of intrigue.
And, besides, if the parcel had been made up of bulbs,
Boxtel knew his neighbour too well not to expect that Van
Baerle would not have lost one moment in satisfying his
curiosity and feasting his eyes on the present which he had
received.
But, on the contrary, Cornelius had received the parcel from
the hands of his godfather with every mark of respect, and
put it by with the same respectful manner in a drawer,
stowing it away so that it should not take up too much of
the room which was reserved to his bulbs.
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