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Page 64
"Hush! let us speak low: my father follows on my heels,"
said the girl.
"Your father?"
"Yes, he is in the courtyard at the bottom of the staircase,
receiving the instructions of the Governor; he will
presently come up."
"The instructions of the Governor?"
"Listen to me, I'll try to tell you all in a few words. The
Stadtholder has a country-house, one league distant from
Leyden, properly speaking a kind of large dairy, and my
aunt, who was his nurse, has the management of it. As soon
as I received your letter, which, alas! I could not read
myself, but which your housekeeper read to me, I hastened to
my aunt; there I remained until the Prince should come to
the dairy; and when he came, I asked him as a favour to
allow my father to exchange his post at the prison of the
Hague with the jailer of the fortress of Loewestein. The
Prince could not have suspected my object; had he known it,
he would have refused my request, but as it is he granted
it."
"And so you are here?"
"As you see."
"And thus I shall see you every day?"
"As often as I can manage it."
"Oh, Rosa, my beautiful Rosa, do you love me a little?"
"A little?" she said, "you make no great pretensions,
Mynheer Cornelius."
Cornelius tenderly stretched out his hands towards her, but
they were only able to touch each other with the tips of
their fingers through the wire grating.
"Here is my father," said she.
Rosa then abruptly drew back from the door, and ran to meet
old Gryphus, who made his appearance at the top of the
staircase.
Chapter 15
The Little Grated Window
Gryphus was followed by the mastiff.
The turnkey took the animal round the jail, so that, if
needs be, he might recognize the prisoners.
"Father," said Rosa, "here is the famous prison from which
Mynheer Grotius escaped. You know Mynheer Grotius?"
"Oh, yes, that rogue Grotius, a friend of that villain
Barneveldt, whom I saw executed when I was a child. Ah! so
Grotius; and that's the chamber from which he escaped. Well,
I'll answer for it that no one shall escape after him in my
time."
And thus opening the door, he began in the dark to talk to
the prisoner.
The dog, on his part, went up to the prisoner, and,
growling, smelled about his legs just as though to ask him
what right he had still to be alive, after having left the
prison in the company of the Recorder and the executioner.
But the fair Rosa called him to her side.
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