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Page 36
The parcel thus being secreted, Cornelius de Witt got up,
pressed the hand of his godson, and turned towards the door,
Van Baerle seizing the candlestick, and lighting him on his
way down to the street, which was still crowded with people
who wished to see their great fellow citizen getting into
his coach.
Boxtel had not been mistaken in his supposition. The deposit
intrusted to Van Baerle, and carefully locked up by him, was
nothing more nor less than John de Witt's correspondence
with the Marquis de Louvois, the war minister of the King of
France; only the godfather forbore giving to his godson the
least intimation concerning the political importance of the
secret, merely desiring him not to deliver the parcel to any
one but to himself, or to whomsoever he should send to claim
it in his name.
And Van Baerle, as we have seen, locked it up with his most
precious bulbs, to think no more of it, after his godfather
had left him; very unlike Boxtel, who looked upon this
parcel as a clever pilot does on the distant and scarcely
perceptible cloud which is increasing on its way and which
is fraught with a storm.
Little dreaming of the jealous hatred of his neighbour, Van
Baerle had proceeded step by step towards gaining the prize
offered by the Horticultural Society of Haarlem. He had
progressed from hazel-nut shade to that of roasted coffee,
and on the very day when the frightful events took place at
the Hague which we have related in the preceding chapters,
we find him, about one o'clock in the day, gathering from
the border the young suckers raised from tulips of the
colour of roasted coffee; and which, being expected to
flower for the first time in the spring of 1675, would
undoubtedly produce the large black tulip required by the
Haarlem Society.
On the 20th of August, 1672, at one o'clock, Cornelius was
therefore in his dry-room, with his feet resting on the
foot-bar of the table, and his elbows on the cover, looking
with intense delight on three suckers which he had just
detached from the mother bulb, pure, perfect, and entire,
and from which was to grow that wonderful produce of
horticulture which would render the name of Cornelius van
Baerle for ever illustrious.
"I shall find the black tulip," said Cornelius to himself,
whilst detaching the suckers. "I shall obtain the hundred
thousand guilders offered by the Society. I shall distribute
them among the poor of Dort; and thus the hatred which every
rich man has to encounter in times of civil wars will be
soothed down, and I shall be able, without fearing any harm
either from Republicans or Orangists, to keep as heretofore
my borders in splendid condition. I need no more be afraid
lest on the day of a riot the shopkeepers of the town and
the sailors of the port should come and tear out my bulbs,
to boil them as onions for their families, as they have
sometimes quietly threatened when they happened to remember
my having paid two or three hundred guilders for one bulb.
It is therefore settled I shall give the hundred thousand
guilders of the Haarlem prize to-the poor. And yet ---- "
Here Cornelius stopped and heaved a sigh. "And yet," he
continued, "it would have been so very delightful to spend
the hundred thousand guilders on the enlargement of my
tulip-bed or even on a journey to the East, the country of
beautiful flowers. But, alas! these are no thoughts for the
present times, when muskets, standards, proclamations, and
beating of drums are the order of the day."
Van Baerle raised his eyes to heaven and sighed again. Then
turning his glance towards his bulbs, -- objects of much
greater importance to him than all those muskets, standards,
drums, and proclamations, which he conceived only to be fit
to disturb the minds of honest people, -- he said: --
"These are, indeed, beautiful bulbs; how smooth they are,
how well formed; there is that air of melancholy about them
which promises to produce a flower of the colour of ebony.
On their skin you cannot even distinguish the circulating
veins with the naked eye. Certainly, certainly, not a light
spot will disfigure the tulip which I have called into
existence. And by what name shall we call this offspring of
my sleepless nights, of my labour and my thought? Tulipa
nigra Barlaensis?
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