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Page 70
"I promise you I will."
"And when you have once planted it, you will communicate to
me all the circumstances which may interest our nursling;
such as change of weather, footprints on the walks, or
footprints in the borders. You will listen at night whether
our garden is not resorted to by cats. A couple of those
untoward animals laid waste two of my borders at Dort."
"I will listen."
"On moonlight nights have you ever looked at your garden, my
dear child?"
"The window of my sleeping-room overlooks it."
"Well, on moonlight nights you will observe whether any rats
come out from the holes in the wall. The rats are most
mischievous by their gnawing everything; and I have heard
unfortunate tulip-growers complain most bitterly of Noah for
having put a couple of rats in the ark."
"I will observe, and if there are cats or rats ---- "
"You will apprise me of it, -- that's right. And, moreover,"
Van Baerle, having become mistrustful in his captivity,
continued, "there is an animal much more to be feared than
even the cat or the rat."
"What animal?"
"Man. You comprehend, my dear Rosa, a man may steal a
guilder, and risk the prison for such a trifle, and,
consequently, it is much more likely that some one might
steal a hundred thousand guilders."
"No one ever enters the garden but myself."
"Thank you, thank you, my dear Rosa. All the joy of my life
has still to come from you."
And as the lips of Van Baerle approached the grating with
the same ardor as the day before, and as, moreover, the hour
for retiring had struck, Rosa drew back her head, and
stretched out her hand.
In this pretty little hand, of which the coquettish damsel
was particularly proud, was the bulb.
Cornelius kissed most tenderly the tips of her fingers. Did
he do so because the hand kept one of the bulbs of the great
black tulip, or because this hand was Rosa's? We shall leave
this point to the decision of wiser heads than ours.
Rosa withdrew with the other two suckers, pressing them to
her heart.
Did she press them to her heart because they were the bulbs
of the great black tulip, or because she had them from
Cornelius?
This point, we believe, might be more readily decided than
the other.
However that may have been, from that moment life became
sweet, and again full of interest to the prisoner.
Rosa, as we have seen, had returned to him one of the
suckers.
Every evening she brought to him, handful by handful, a
quantity of soil from that part of the garden which he had
found to be the best, and which, indeed, was excellent.
A large jug, which Cornelius had skilfully broken, did
service as a flower-pot. He half filled it, and mixed the
earth of the garden with a small portion of dried river mud,
a mixture which formed an excellent soil.
Then, at the beginning of April, he planted his first sucker
in that jug.
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