Cornelius de Witt, after having attended to his familyaffairs, reached the house of his godson, Cornelius vanBaerle, one evening in the month of January, 1672.
De Witt, although being very little of a horticulturist orof an artist, went over the whole mansion, from the studioto the green-house, inspecting everything, from the picturesdown to the tulips. He thanked his godson for having joinedhim on the deck of the admiral's ship "The Seven Provinces,"during the battle of Southwold Bay, and for having given hisname to a magnificent tulip; and whilst he thus, with thekindness and affability of a father to a son, visited VanBaerle's treasures, the crowd gathered with curiosity, andeven respect, before the door of the happy man.
All this hubbub excited the attention of Boxtel, who wasjust taking his meal by his fireside. He inquired what itmeant, and, on being informed of the cause of all this stir,climbed up to his post of observation, where in spite of thecold, he took his stand, with the telescope to his eye.
This telescope had not been of great service to him sincethe autumn of 1671. The tulips, like true daughters of theEast, averse to cold, do not abide in the open ground inwinter. They need the shelter of the house, the soft bed onthe shelves, and the congenial warmth of the stove. VanBaerle, therefore, passed the whole winter in hislaboratory, in the midst of his books and pictures. He wentonly rarely to the room where he kept his bulbs, unless itwere to allow some occasional rays of the sun to enter, byopening one of the movable sashes of the glass front.
On the evening of which we are speaking, after the twoCorneliuses had visited together all the apartments of thehouse, whilst a train of domestics followed their steps, DeWitt said in a low voice to Van Baerle, --"My dear son, send these people away, and let us be alonefor some minutes."The younger Cornelius, bowing assent, said aloud, --"Would you now, sir, please to see my dry-room?"The dry-room, this pantheon, this sanctum sanctorum of thetulip-fancier, was, as Delphi of old, interdicted to theprofane uninitiated.
Never had any of his servants been bold enough to set hisfoot there. Cornelius admitted only the inoffensive broom ofan old Frisian housekeeper, who had been his nurse, and whofrom the time when he had devoted himself to the culture oftulips ventured no longer to put onions in his stews, forfear of pulling to pieces and mincing the idol of her fosterchild.
At the mere mention of the dry-room, therefore, the servantswho were carrying the lights respectfully fell back.
Cornelius, taking the candlestick from the hands of theforemost, conducted his godfather into that room, which wasno other than that very cabinet with a glass front intowhich Boxtel was continually prying with his telescope.
The envious spy was watching more intently than ever.
First of all he saw the walls and windows lit up.
Then two dark figures appeared.
One of them, tall, majestic, stern, sat down near the tableon which Van Baerle had placed the taper.
In this figure, Boxtel recognised the pale features ofCornelius de Witt, whose long hair, parted in front, fellover his shoulders.
De Witt, after having said some few words to Cornelius, themeaning of which the prying neighbour could not read in themovement of his lips, took from his breast pocket a whiteparcel, carefully sealed, which Boxtel, judging from themanner in which Cornelius received it, and placed it in oneof the presses, supposed to contain papers of the greatestimportance.
His first thought was that this precious deposit enclosedsome newly imported bulbs from Bengal or Ceylon; but he soonreflected that Cornelius de Witt was very little addicted totulip-growing, and that he only occupied himself with theaffairs of man, a pursuit by far less peaceful and agreeablethan that of the florist. He therefore came to theconclusion that the parcel contained simply some papers, andthat these papers were relating to politics.
But why should papers of political import be intrusted toVan Baerle, who not only was, but also boasted of being, anentire stranger to the science of government, which, in hisopinion, was more occult than alchemy itself?
It was undoubtedly a deposit which Cornelius de Witt,already threatened by the unpopularity with which hiscountrymen were going to honour him, was placing in thehands of his godson; a contrivance so much the more cleverlydevised, as it certainly was not at all likely that itshould be searched for at the house of one who had alwaysstood aloof from every sort of intrigue.
And, besides, if the parcel had been made up of bulbs,Boxtel knew his neighbour too well not to expect that VanBaerle would not have lost one moment in satisfying hiscuriosity and feasting his eyes on the present which he hadreceived.
But, on the contrary, Cornelius had received the parcel fromthe hands of his godfather with every mark of respect, andput it by with the same respectful manner in a drawer,stowing it away so that it should not take up too much ofthe room which was reserved to his bulbs.
The parcel thus being secreted, Cornelius de Witt got up,pressed the hand of his godson, and turned towards the door,Van Baerle seizing the candlestick, and lighting him on hisway down to the street, which was still crowded with peoplewho wished to see their great fellow citizen getting intohis coach.
Boxtel had not been mistaken in his supposition. The depositintrusted to Van Baerle, and carefully locked up by him, wasnothing more nor less than John de Witt's correspondencewith the Marquis de Louvois, the war minister of the King ofFrance; only the godfather forbore giving to his godson theleast intimation concerning the political importance of thesecret, merely desiring him not to deliver the parcel to anyone but to himself, or to whomsoever he should send to claimit in his name.
And Van Baerle, as we have seen, locked it up with his mostprecious bulbs, to think no more of it, after his godfatherhad left him; very unlike Boxtel, who looked upon thisparcel as a clever pilot does on the distant and scarcelyperceptible cloud which is increasing on its way and whichis fraught with a storm.
Little dreaming of the jealous hatred of his neighbour, VanBaerle had proceeded step by step towards gaining the prizeoffered by the Horticultural Society of Haarlem. He hadprogressed from hazel-nut shade to that of roasted coffee,and on the very day when the frightful events took place atthe Hague which we have related in the preceding chapters,we find him, about one o'clock in the day, gathering fromthe border the young suckers raised from tulips of thecolour of roasted coffee; and which, being expected toflower for the first time in the spring of 1675, wouldundoubtedly produce the large black tulip required by theHaarlem Society.
On the 20th of August, 1672, at one o'clock, Cornelius wastherefore in his dry-room, with his feet resting on thefoot-bar of the table, and his elbows on the cover, lookingwith intense delight on three suckers which he had justdetached from the mother bulb, pure, perfect, and entire,and from which was to grow that wonderful produce ofhorticulture which would render the name of Cornelius vanBaerle for ever illustrious.
"I shall find the black tulip," said Cornelius to himself,whilst detaching the suckers. "I shall obtain the hundredthousand guilders offered by the Society. I shall distributethem among the poor of Dort; and thus the hatred which everyrich man has to encounter in times of civil wars will besoothed down, and I shall be able, without fearing any harmeither from Republicans or Orangists, to keep as heretoforemy borders in splendid condition. I need no more be afraidlest on the day of a riot the shopkeepers of the town andthe sailors of the port should come and tear out my bulbs,to boil them as onions for their families, as they havesometimes quietly threatened when they happened to remembermy having paid two or three hundred guilders for one bulb.
It is therefore settled I shall give the hundred thousandguilders of the Haarlem prize to-the poor. And yet ---- "Here Cornelius stopped and heaved a sigh. "And yet," hecontinued, "it would have been so very delightful to spendthe hundred thousand guilders on the enlargement of mytulip-bed or even on a journey to the East, the country ofbeautiful flowers. But, alas! these are no thoughts for thepresent times, when muskets, standards, proclamations, andbeating of drums are the order of the day."Van Baerle raised his eyes to heaven and sighed again. Thenturning his glance towards his bulbs, -- objects of muchgreater importance to him than all those muskets, standards,drums, and proclamations, which he conceived only to be fitto disturb the minds of honest people, -- he said: --"These are, indeed, beautiful bulbs; how smooth they are,how well formed; there is that air of melancholy about themwhich promises to produce a flower of the colour of ebony.
On their skin you cannot even distinguish the circulatingveins with the naked eye. Certainly, certainly, not a lightspot will disfigure the tulip which I have called intoexistence. And by what name shall we call this offspring ofmy sleepless nights, of my labour and my thought? Tulipanigra Barlaensis?
"Yes Barlaensis: a fine name. All the tulip-fanciers -- thatis to say, all the intelligent people of Europe -- will feela thrill of excitement when the rumour spreads to the fourquarters of the globe: The grand black tulip is found! 'Howis it called?' the fanciers will ask. -- 'Tulipa nigraBarlaensis!' -- 'Why Barlaensis?' -- 'After its grower, VanBaerle,' will be the answer. -- 'And who is this VanBaerle?' -- 'It is the same who has already produced fivenew tulips: the Jane, the John de Witt, the Cornelius deWitt, etc.' Well, that is what I call my ambition. It willcause tears to no one. And people will talk of my Tulipanigra Barlaensis when perhaps my godfather, this sublimepolitician, is only known from the tulip to which I havegiven his name.
"Oh! these darling bulbs!
"When my tulip has flowered," Baerle continued in hissoliloquy, "and when tranquillity is restored in Holland, Ishall give to the poor only fifty thousand guilders, which,after all, is a goodly sum for a man who is under noobligation whatever. Then, with the remaining fifty thousandguilders, I shall make experiments. With them I shallsucceed in imparting scent to the tulip. Ah! if I succeed ingiving it the odour of the rose or the carnation, or, whatwould be still better, a completely new scent; if I restoredto this queen of flowers its natural distinctive perfume,which she has lost in passing from her Eastern to herEuropean throne, and which she must have in the Indianpeninsula at Goa, Bombay, and Madras, and especially in thatisland which in olden times, as is asserted, was theterrestrial paradise, and which is called Ceylon, -- oh,what glory! I must say, I would then rather be Cornelius vanBaerle than Alexander, Caesar, or Maximilian.
"Oh the admirable bulbs!"Thus Cornelius indulged in the delights of contemplation,and was carried away by the sweetest dreams.
Suddenly the bell of his cabinet was rung much moreviolently than usual.
Cornelius, startled, laid his hands on his bulbs, and turnedround.
"Who is here?" he asked.
"Sir," answered the servant, "it is a messenger from theHague.""A messenger from the Hague! What does he want?""Sir, it is Craeke.""Craeke! the confidential servant of Mynheer John de Witt?
Good, let him wait.""I cannot wait," said a voice in the lobby.
And at the same time forcing his way in, Craeke rushed intothe dry-room.
This abrupt entrance was such an infringement on theestablished rules of the household of Cornelius van Baerle,that the latter, at the sight of Craeke, almost convulsivelymoved his hand which covered the bulbs, so that two of themfell on the floor, one of them rolling under a small table,and the other into the fireplace.
"Zounds!" said Cornelius, eagerly picking up his preciousbulbs, "what's the matter?""The matter, sir!" said Craeke, laying a paper on the largetable, on which the third bulb was lying, -- "the matter is,that you are requested to read this paper without losing onemoment."And Craeke, who thought he had remarked in the streets ofDort symptoms of a tumult similar to that which he hadwitnessed before his departure from the Hague, ran offwithout even looking behind him.
"All right! all right! my dear Craeke," said Cornelius,stretching his arm under the table for the bulb; "your papershall be read, indeed it shall."Then, examining the bulb which he held in the hollow of hishand, he said: "Well, here is one of them uninjured. Thatconfounded Craeke! thus to rush into my dry-room; let us nowlook after the other."And without laying down the bulb which he already held,Baerle went to the fireplace, knelt down and stirred withthe tip of his finger the ashes, which fortunately werequite cold.
He at once felt the other bulb.
"Well, here it is," he said; and, looking at it with almostfatherly affection, he exclaimed, "Uninjured as the first!"At this very instant, and whilst Cornelius, still on hisknees, was examining his pets, the door of the dry-room wasso violently shaken, and opened in such a brusque manner,that Cornelius felt rising in his cheeks and his ears theglow of that evil counsellor which is called wrath.
"Now, what is it again," he demanded; "are people going madhere?""Oh, sir! sir!" cried the servant, rushing into the dry-roomwith a much paler face and with a much more frightened mienthan Craeke had shown.
"Well!" asked Cornelius, foreboding some mischief from thedouble breach of the strict rule of his house.
"Oh, sir, fly! fly quick!" cried the servant.
"Fly! and what for?""Sir, the house is full of the guards of the States.""What do they want?""They want you.""What for?""To arrest you.""Arrest me? arrest me, do you say?""Yes, sir, and they are headed by a magistrate.""What's the meaning of all this?" said Van Baerle, graspingin his hands the two bulbs, and directing his terrifiedglance towards the staircase.
"They are coming up! they are coming up!" cried the servant.
"Oh, my dear child, my worthy master!" cried the oldhousekeeper, who now likewise made her appearance in thedry-room, "take your gold, your jewelry, and fly, fly!""But how shall I make my escape, nurse?" said Van Baerle.
"Jump out of the window.""Twenty-five feet from the ground!""But you will fall on six feet of soft soil!""Yes, but I should fall on my tulips.""Never mind, jump out."Cornelius took the third bulb, approached the window andopened it, but seeing what havoc he would necessarily causein his borders, and, more than this, what a height he wouldhave to jump, he called out, "Never!" and fell back a step.
At this moment they saw across the banister of the staircasethe points of the halberds of the soldiers rising.
The housekeeper raised her hands to heaven.
As to Cornelius van Baerle, it must be stated to his honour,not as a man, but as a tulip-fancier, his only thought wasfor his inestimable bulbs.
Looking about for a paper in which to wrap them up, henoticed the fly-leaf from the Bible, which Craeke had laidupon the table, took it without in his confusion rememberingwhence it came, folded in it the three bulbs, secreted themin his bosom, and waited.
At this very moment the soldiers, preceded by a magistrate,entered the room.
"Are you Dr. Cornelius van Baerle?" demanded the magistrate(who, although knowing the young man very well, put hisquestion according to the forms of justice, which gave hisproceedings a much more dignified air).
"I am that person, Master van Spennen," answered Cornelius,politely, to his judge, "and you know it very well.""Then give up to us the seditious papers which you secretein your house.""The seditious papers!" repeated Cornelius, quite dumfoundedat the imputation.
"Now don't look astonished, if you please.""I vow to you, Master van Spennen, "Cornelius replied, "thatI am completely at a loss to understand what you want.""Then I shall put you in the way, Doctor," said the judge;"give up to us the papers which the traitor Cornelius deWitt deposited with you in the month of January last."A sudden light came into the mind of Cornelius.
"Halloa!" said Van Spennen, "you begin now to remember,don't you?""Indeed I do, but you spoke of seditious papers, and I havenone of that sort.""You deny it then?""Certainly I do."The magistrate turned round and took a rapid survey of thewhole cabinet.
"Where is the apartment you call your dry-room?" he asked.
"The very same where you now are, Master van Spennen."The magistrate cast a glance at a small note at the top ofhis papers.
"All right," he said, like a man who is sure of his ground.
Then, turning round towards Cornelius, he continued, "Willyou give up those papers to me?""But I cannot, Master van Spennen; those papers do notbelong to me; they have been deposited with me as a trust,and a trust is sacred.""Dr. Cornelius," said the judge, "in the name of the States,I order you to open this drawer, and to give up to me thepapers which it contains."Saying this, the judge pointed with his finger to the thirddrawer of the press, near the fireplace.
In this very drawer, indeed the papers deposited by theWarden of the Dikes with his godson were lying; a proof thatthe police had received very exact information.
"Ah! you will not," said Van Spennen, when he saw Corneliusstanding immovable and bewildered, "then I shall open thedrawer myself."And, pulling out the drawer to its full length, themagistrate at first alighted on about twenty bulbs,carefully arranged and ticketed, and then on the paperparcel, which had remained in exactly the same state as itwas when delivered by the unfortunate Cornelius de Witt tohis godson.
The magistrate broke the seals, tore off the envelope, castan eager glance on the first leaves which met his eye andthen exclaimed, in a terrible voice, --"Well, justice has been rightly informed after all!""How," said Cornelius, "how is this?""Don't pretend to be ignorant, Mynheer van Baerle," answeredthe magistrate. "Follow me.""How's that! follow you?" cried the Doctor.
"Yes, sir, for in the name of the States I arrest you."Arrests were not as yet made in the name of William ofOrange; he had not been Stadtholder long enough for that.
"Arrest me!" cried Cornelius; "but what have I done?""That's no affair of mine, Doctor; you will explain all thatbefore your judges.""Where?""At the Hague."Cornelius, in mute stupefaction, embraced his old nurse, whowas in a swoon; shook hands with his servants, who werebathed in tears, and followed the magistrate, who put him ina coach as a prisoner of state and had him driven at fullgallop to the Hague.