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Page 80
"Not one, indeed."
"Rosa," said Cornelius, growing quite pale.
"Well?"
"It was not you he was after."
"Who else, then?"
"It is not you that he was in love with!"
"But with whom else?"
"He was after my bulb, and is in love with my tulip!"
"You don't say so! And yet it is very possible," said Rosa.
"Will you make sure of it?"
"In what manner?"
"Oh, it would be very easy!"
"Tell me."
"Go to-morrow into the garden; manage matters so that Jacob
may know, as he did the first time, that you are going
there, and that he may follow you. Feign to put the bulb
into the ground; leave the garden, but look through the
keyhole of the door and watch him."
"Well, and what then?"
"What then? We shall do as he does."
"Oh!" said Rosa, with a sigh, "you are very fond of your
bulbs."
"To tell the truth," said the prisoner, sighing likewise,
"since your father crushed that unfortunate bulb, I feel as
if part of my own self had been paralyzed."
"Now just hear me," said Rosa; "will you try something
else?"
"What?"
"Will you accept the proposition of my father?"
"Which proposition?"
"Did not he offer to you tulip bulbs by hundreds?"
"Indeed he did."
"Accept two or three, and, along with them, you may grow the
third sucker."
"Yes, that would do very well," said Cornelius, knitting his
brow; "if your father were alone, but there is that Master
Jacob, who watches all our ways."
"Well, that is true; but only think! you are depriving
yourself, as I can easily see, of a very great pleasure."
She pronounced these words with a smile, which was not
altogether without a tinge of irony.
Cornelius reflected for a moment; he evidently was
struggling against some vehement desire.
"No!" he cried at last, with the stoicism of a Roman of old,
"it would be a weakness, it would be a folly, it would be a
meanness! If I thus give up the only and last resource which
we possess to the uncertain chances of the bad passions of
anger and envy, I should never deserve to be forgiven. No,
Rosa, no; to-morrow we shall come to a conclusion as to the
spot to be chosen for your tulip; you will plant it
according to my instructions; and as to the third sucker,"
-- Cornelius here heaved a deep sigh, -- "watch over it as a
miser over his first or last piece of gold; as the mother
over her child; as the wounded over the last drop of blood
in his veins; watch over it, Rosa! Some voice within me
tells me that it will be our saving, that it will be a
source of good to us."
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