The Black Tulip - Alexandre Dumas (comprehension books .TXT) 📗

Cornelius; and though, unfortunately, I am not able to read, I will take care that what you write shall be accomplished.”

Cornelius took the Bible, and kissed it reverently.

“With what shall I write?” asked Cornelius.

“There is a pencil in the Bible,” said Rosa.

This was the pencil which John de Witt had lent to his brother, and which he had forgotten to take away with him.

Cornelius took it, and on the second fly leaf (for it will be remembered that the first was torn out), drawing near his end like his godfather, he wrote with a no less firm hand:

“On this day, the 23rd of August, 1672, being on the point of rendering, although innocent, my soul to God on the scaffold, I bequeath to Rosa Gryphus the only worldly goods which remain to me of all that I have possessed in this world, the rest having been confiscated; I bequeath, I say, to Rosa Gryphus three bulbs, which I am convinced must produce, in the next May, the Grand Black Tulip for which a prize of a hundred thousand guilders has been offered by the Haarlem Society, requesting that she may be paid the same sum in my stead, as my sole heiress, under the only condition of her marrying a respectable young man of about my age, who loves her, and whom she loves, and of her giving the black tulip, which will constitute a new species, the name of Rosa Barlœnsis, that is to say, hers and mine combined.

“So may God grant me mercy, and to her health and long life!

“Cornelius van Baerle.”

The prisoner then, giving the Bible to Rosa, said⁠—

“Read.”

“Alas!” she answered, “I have already told you I cannot read.”

Cornelius then read to Rosa the testament that he had just made.

The agony of the poor girl almost overpowered her.

“Do you accept my conditions?” asked the prisoner, with a melancholy smile, kissing the trembling hands of the afflicted girl.

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” she stammered.

“You don’t know, child, and why not?”

“Because there is one condition which I am afraid I cannot keep.”

“Which? I should have thought that all was settled between us.”

“You give me the hundred thousand guilders as a marriage portion, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And under the condition of my marrying a man whom I love?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, then, sir, this money cannot belong to me. I shall never love anyone; neither shall I marry.”

And, after having with difficulty uttered these words, Rosa almost swooned away in the violence of her grief.

Cornelius, frightened at seeing her so pale and sinking, was going to take her in his arms, when a heavy step, followed by other dismal sounds, was heard on the staircase, amidst the continued barking of the dog.

“They are coming to fetch you. Oh God! Oh God!” cried Rosa, wringing her hands. “And have you nothing more to tell me?”

She fell on her knees with her face buried in her hands and became almost senseless.

“I have only to say, that I wish you to preserve these bulbs as a most precious treasure, and carefully to treat them according to the directions I have given you. Do it for my sake, and now farewell, Rosa.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, without raising her head, “I will do anything you bid me, except marrying,” she added, in a low voice, “for that, oh! that is impossible for me.”

She then put the cherished treasure next her beating heart.

The noise on the staircase which Cornelius and Rosa had heard was caused by the Recorder, who was coming for the prisoner. He was followed by the executioner, by the soldiers who were to form the guard round the scaffold, and by some curious hangers-on of the prison.

Cornelius, without showing any weakness, but likewise without any bravado, received them rather as friends than as persecutors, and quietly submitted to all those preparations which these men were obliged to make in performance of their duty.

Then, casting a glance into the yard through the narrow iron-barred window of his cell, he perceived the scaffold, and, at twenty paces distant from it, the gibbet, from which, by order of the Stadtholder, the outraged remains of the two brothers De Witt had been taken down.

When the moment came to descend in order to follow the guards, Cornelius sought with his eyes the angelic look of Rosa, but he saw, behind the swords and halberds, only a form lying outstretched near a wooden bench, and a deathlike face half covered with long golden locks.

But Rosa, whilst falling down senseless, still obeying her friend, had pressed her hand on her velvet bodice and, forgetting everything in the world besides, instinctively grasped the precious deposit which Cornelius had entrusted to her care.

Leaving the cell, the young man could still see in the convulsively clinched fingers of Rosa the yellowish leaf from that Bible on which Cornelius de Witt had with such difficulty and pain written these few lines, which, if Van Baerle had read them, would undoubtedly have been the saving of a man and a tulip.

XII The Execution

Cornelius had not three hundred paces to walk outside the prison to reach the foot of the scaffold. At the bottom of the staircase, the dog quietly looked at him whilst he was passing; Cornelius even fancied he saw in the eyes of the monster a certain expression as it were of compassion.

The dog perhaps knew the condemned prisoners, and only bit those who left as free men.

The shorter the way from the door of the prison to the foot of the scaffold, the more fully, of course, it was crowded with curious people.

These were the same who, not satisfied with the blood which they had shed three days before, were now craving for a new victim.

And scarcely had Cornelius made his appearance than a fierce groan ran through the whole street, spreading all over the yard, and reechoing from the streets which led to the scaffold, and which were likewise crowded with spectators.

The scaffold indeed looked