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Page 60
Boxtel had at first tried to gain over Gryphus to his
interest, but the jailer had not only the snarling
fierceness, but likewise the fidelity, of a dog. He had
therefore bristled up at Boxtel's hatred, whom he had
suspected to be a warm friend of the prisoner, making
trifling inquiries to contrive with the more certainty some
means of escape for him.
Thus to the very first proposals which Boxtel made to
Gryphus to filch the bulbs which Cornelius van Baerle must
be supposed to conceal, if not in his breast, at least in
some corner of his cell, the surly jailer had only answered
by kicking Mynheer Isaac out, and setting the dog at him.
The piece which the mastiff had torn from his hose did not
discourage Boxtel. He came back to the charge, but this time
Gryphus was in bed, feverish, and with a broken arm. He
therefore was not able to admit the petitioner, who then
addressed himself to Rosa, offering to buy her a head-dress
of pure gold if she would get the bulbs for him. On this,
the generous girl, although not yet knowing the value of the
object of the robbery, which was to be so well remunerated,
had directed the tempter to the executioner, as the heir of
the prisoner.
In the meanwhile the sentence had been pronounced. Thus
Isaac had no more time to bribe any one. He therefore clung
to the idea which Rosa had suggested: he went to the
executioner.
Isaac had not the least doubt that Cornelius would die with
the bulbs on his heart.
But there were two things which Boxtel did not calculate
upon: --
Rosa, that is to say, love;
William of Orange, that is to say, clemency.
But for Rosa and William, the calculations of the envious
neighbour would have been correct.
But for William, Cornelius would have died.
But for Rosa, Cornelius would have died with his bulbs on
his heart.
Mynheer Boxtel went to the headsman, to whom he gave himself
out as a great friend of the condemned man; and from whom he
bought all the clothes of the dead man that was to be, for
one hundred guilders; rather an exorbitant sum, as he
engaged to leave all the trinkets of gold and silver to the
executioner.
But what was the sum of a hundred guilders to a man who was
all but sure to buy with it the prize of the Haarlem
Society?
It was money lent at a thousand per cent., which, as nobody
will deny, was a very handsome investment.
The headsman, on the other hand, had scarcely anything to do
to earn his hundred guilders. He needed only, as soon as the
execution was over, to allow Mynheer Boxtel to ascend the
scaffold with his servants, to remove the inanimate remains
of his friend.
The thing was, moreover, quite customary among the "faithful
brethren," when one of their masters died a public death in
the yard of the Buytenhof.
A fanatic like Cornelius might very easily have found
another fanatic who would give a hundred guilders for his
remains.
The executioner also readily acquiesced in the proposal,
making only one condition, -- that of being paid in advance.
Boxtel, like the people who enter a show at a fair, might be
disappointed, and refuse to pay on going out.
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