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Page 61
Boxtel paid in advance, and waited.
After this, the reader may imagine how excited Boxtel was;
with what anxiety he watched the guards, the Recorder, and
the executioner; and with what intense interest he surveyed
the movements of Van Baerle. How would he place himself on
the block? how would he fall? and would he not, in falling,
crush those inestimable bulbs? had not he at least taken
care to enclose them in a golden box, -- as gold is the
hardest of all metals?
Every trifling delay irritated him. Why did that stupid
executioner thus lose time in brandishing his sword over the
head of Cornelius, instead of cutting that head off?
But when he saw the Recorder take the hand of the condemned,
and raise him, whilst drawing forth the parchment from his
pocket, -- when he heard the pardon of the Stadtholder
publicly read out, -- then Boxtel was no more like a human
being; the rage and malice of the tiger, of the hyena, and
of the serpent glistened in his eyes, and vented itself in
his yell and his movements. Had he been able to get at Van
Baerle, he would have pounced upon him and strangled him.
And so, then, Cornelius was to live, and was to go with him
to Loewestein, and thither to his prison he would take with
him his bulbs; and perhaps he would even find a garden where
the black tulip would flower for him.
Boxtel, quite overcome by his frenzy, fell from the stone
upon some Orangemen, who, like him, were sorely vexed at the
turn which affairs had taken. They, mistaking the frantic
cries of Mynheer Isaac for demonstrations of joy, began to
belabour him with kicks and cuffs, such as could not have
been administered in better style by any prize-fighter on
the other side of the Channel.
Blows were, however, nothing to him. He wanted to run after
the coach which was carrying away Cornelius with his bulbs.
But in his hurry he overlooked a paving-stone in his way,
stumbled, lost his centre of gravity, rolled over to a
distance of some yards, and only rose again, bruised and
begrimed, after the whole rabble of the Hague, with their
muddy feet, had passed over him.
One would think that this was enough for one day, but
Mynheer Boxtel did not seem to think so, as, in addition to
having his clothes torn, his back bruised, and his hands
scratched, he inflicted upon himself the further punishment
of tearing out his hair by handfuls, as an offering to that
goddess of envy who, as mythology teaches us, wears a
head-dress of serpents.
Chapter 14
The Pigeons of Dort
It was indeed in itself a great honour for Cornelius van
Baerle to be confined in the same prison which had once
received the learned master Grotius.
But on arriving at the prison he met with an honour even
greater. As chance would have it, the cell formerly
inhabited by the illustrious Barneveldt happened to be
vacant, when the clemency of the Prince of Orange sent the
tulip-fancier Van Baerle there.
The cell had a very bad character at the castle since the
time when Grotius, by means of the device of his wife, made
escape from it in that famous book-chest which the jailers
forgot to examine.
On the other hand, it seemed to Van Baerle an auspicious
omen that this very cell was assigned to him, for according
to his ideas, a jailer ought never to have given to a second
pigeon the cage from which the first had so easily flown.
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