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Page 52
Cornelius did not accept of this hypocritical protection,
and in a last answer, which he set forth with the noble
bearing of a martyr and the calm serenity of a righteous
man, he said, --
"You ask me things, gentlemen, to which I can answer only
the exact truth. Hear it. The parcel was put into my hands
in the way I have described; I vow before God that I was,
and am still, ignorant of its contents, and that it was not
until my arrest that I learned that this deposit was the
correspondence of the Grand Pensionary with the Marquis de
Louvois. And lastly, I vow and protest that I do not
understand how any one should have known that this parcel
was in my house; and, above all, how I can be deemed
criminal for having received what my illustrious and
unfortunate godfather brought to my house."
This was Van Baerle's whole defence; after which the judges
began to deliberate on the verdict.
They considered that every offshoot of civil discord is
mischievous, because it revives the contest which it is the
interest of all to put down.
One of them, who bore the character of a profound observer,
laid down as his opinion that this young man, so phlegmatic
in appearance, must in reality be very dangerous, as under
this icy exterior he was sure to conceal an ardent desire to
avenge his friends, the De Witts.
Another observed that the love of tulips agreed perfectly
well with that of politics, and that it was proved in
history that many very dangerous men were engaged in
gardening, just as if it had been their profession, whilst
really they occupied themselves with perfectly different
concerns; witness Tarquin the Elder, who grew poppies at
Gabii, and the Great Conde, who watered his carnations at
the dungeon of Vincennes at the very moment when the former
meditated his return to Rome, and the latter his escape from
prison.
The judge summed up with the following dilemma: --
"Either Cornelius van Baerle is a great lover of tulips, or
a great lover of politics; in either case, he has told us a
falsehood; first, because his having occupied himself with
politics is proved by the letters which were found at his
house; and secondly, because his having occupied himself
with tulips is proved by the bulbs which leave no doubt of
the fact. And herein lies the enormity of the case. As
Cornelius van Baerle was concerned in the growing of tulips
and in the pursuit of politics at one and the same time, the
prisoner is of hybrid character, of an amphibious
organisation, working with equal ardour at politics and at
tulips, which proves him to belong to the class of men most
dangerous to public tranquillity, and shows a certain, or
rather a complete, analogy between his character and that of
those master minds of which Tarquin the Elder and the Great
Conde have been felicitously quoted as examples."
The upshot of all these reasonings was, that his Highness
the Prince Stadtholder of Holland would feel infinitely
obliged to the magistracy of the Hague if they simplified
for him the government of the Seven Provinces by destroying
even the least germ of conspiracy against his authority.
This argument capped all the others, and, in order so much
the more effectually to destroy the germ of conspiracy,
sentence of death was unanimously pronounced against
Cornelius van Baerle, as being arraigned, and convicted, for
having, under the innocent appearance of a tulip-fancier,
participated in the detestable intrigues and abominable
plots of the brothers De Witt against Dutch nationality and
in their secret relations with their French enemy.
A supplementary clause was tacked to the sentence, to the
effect that "the aforesaid Cornelius van Baerle should be
led from the prison of the Buytenhof to the scaffold in the
yard of the same name, where the public executioner would
cut off his head."
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