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Page 99
"What's the name of the President?"
"Give me the letter, I will direct it. Oh, he is very well
known: it is Mynheer van Systens, the burgomaster of
Haarlem; give it to me, Rosa, give it to me."
And with a trembling hand Cornelius wrote the address, --
"To Mynheer Peter van Systens, Burgomaster, and President of
the Horticultural Society of Haarlem."
"And now, Rosa, go, go," said Cornelius, "and let us implore
the protection of God, who has so kindly watched over us
until now."
Chapter 23
The Rival
And in fact the poor young people were in great need of protection.
They had never been so near the destruction of their hopes
as at this moment, when they thought themselves certain of
their fulfilment.
The reader cannot but have recognized in Jacob our old
friend, or rather enemy, Isaac Boxtel, and has guessed, no
doubt, that this worthy had followed from the Buytenhof to
Loewestein the object of his love and the object of his
hatred, -- the black tulip and Cornelius van Baerle.
What no one but a tulip-fancier, and an envious
tulip-fancier, could have discovered, -- the existence of
the bulbs and the endeavours of the prisoner, -- jealousy
had enabled Boxtel, if not to discover, at least to guess.
We have seen him, more successful under the name of Jacob
than under that of Isaac, gain the friendship of Gryphus,
which for several months he cultivated by means of the best
Genievre ever distilled from the Texel to Antwerp, and he
lulled the suspicion of the jealous turnkey by holding out
to him the flattering prospect of his designing to marry
Rosa.
Besides thus offering a bait to the ambition of the father,
he managed, at the same time, to interest his zeal as a
jailer, picturing to him in the blackest colours the learned
prisoner whom Gryphus had in his keeping, and who, as the
sham Jacob had it, was in league with Satan, to the
detriment of his Highness the Prince of Orange.
At first he had also made some way with Rosa; not, indeed,
in her affections, but inasmuch as, by talking to her of
marriage and of love, he had evaded all the suspicions which
he might otherwise have excited.
We have seen how his imprudence in following Rosa into the
garden had unmasked him in the eyes of the young damsel, and
how the instinctive fears of Cornelius had put the two
lovers on their guard against him.
The reader will remember that the first cause of uneasiness
was given to the prisoner by the rage of Jacob when Gryphus
crushed the first bulb. In that moment Boxtel's exasperation
was the more fierce, as, though suspecting that Cornelius
possessed a second bulb, he by no means felt sure of it.
From that moment he began to dodge the steps of Rosa, not
only following her to the garden, but also to the lobbies.
Only as this time he followed her in the night, and
bare-footed, he was neither seen nor heard except once, when
Rosa thought she saw something like a shadow on the
staircase.
Her discovery, however, was made too late, as Boxtel had
heard from the mouth of the prisoner himself that a second
bulb existed.
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