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

any rate.”

“Have you any paper? for they have left me nothing.”

“Here, take this Bible, and tear out the flyleaf.”

“Very well, that will do.”

“But your writing will be illegible.”

“Just leave me alone for that,” said Cornelius. “The executioners have indeed pinched me badly enough, but my hand will not tremble once in tracing the few lines which are requisite.”

And really Cornelius took the pencil and began to write, when through the white linen bandages drops of blood oozed out which the pressure of the fingers against the pencil squeezed from the raw flesh.

A cold sweat stood on the brow of the Grand Pensionary.

Cornelius wrote:

“August 20, 1672.”

“My Dear Godson,⁠—Burn the parcel which I have entrusted to you. Burn it without looking at it, and without opening it, so that its contents may forever remain unknown to yourself. Secrets of this description are death to those with whom they are deposited. Burn it, and you will have saved John and Cornelius de Witt.

“Farewell, and love me.

“Cornelius de Witt.

John, with tears in his eyes, wiped off a drop of the noble blood which had soiled the leaf, and, after having handed the despatch to Craeke with a last direction, returned to Cornelius, who seemed overcome by intense pain, and near fainting.

“Now,” said he, “when honest Craeke sounds his coxswain’s whistle, it will be a signal of his being clear of the crowd, and of his having reached the other side of the pond. And then it will be our turn to depart.”

Five minutes had not elapsed, before a long and shrill whistle was heard through the din and noise of the square of the Buytenhof.

John gratefully raised his eyes to heaven.

“And now,” said he, “let us off, Cornelius.”

III The Pupil of John de Witt

Whilst the clamour of the crowd in the square of Buytenhof, which grew more and more menacing against the two brothers, determined John de Witt to hasten the departure of his brother Cornelius, a deputation of burghers had gone to the Town-hall to demand the withdrawal of Tilly’s horse.

It was not far from the Buytenhof to Hoogstraet (High Street); and a stranger, who since the beginning of this scene had watched all its incidents with intense interest, was seen to wend his way with, or rather in the wake of, the others towards the Town-hall, to hear as soon as possible the current news of the hour.

This stranger was a very young man, of scarcely twenty-two or three, with nothing about him that bespoke any great energy. He evidently had his good reasons for not making himself known, as he hid his face in a handkerchief of fine Frisian linen, with which he incessantly wiped his brow or his burning lips.

With an eye keen as that of a bird of prey⁠—with a long aquiline nose, a finely cut mouth, which he generally kept open, or rather which was gaping like the edges of a wound⁠—this man would have presented to Lavater, if Lavater had lived at that time, a subject for physiognomical observations which at the first blush would not have been very favourable to the person in question.

“What difference is there between the figure of the conqueror and that of the pirate?” said the ancients. The difference only between the eagle and the vulture⁠—serenity or restlessness.

And indeed the sallow physiognomy, the thin and sickly body, and the prowling ways of the stranger, were the very type of a suspecting master, or an unquiet thief; and a police officer would certainly have decided in favour of the latter supposition, on account of the great care which the mysterious person evidently took to hide himself.

He was plainly dressed, and apparently unarmed; his arm was lean but wiry, and his hands dry, but of an aristocratic whiteness and delicacy, and he leaned on the shoulder of an officer, who, with his hand on his sword, had watched the scenes in the Buytenhof with eager curiosity, very natural in a military man, until his companion drew him away with him.

On arriving at the square of the Hoogstraet, the man with the sallow face pushed the other behind an open shutter, from which corner he himself began to survey the balcony of the Town-hall.

At the savage yells of the mob, the window of the Town-hall opened, and a man came forth to address the people.

“Who is that on the balcony?” asked the young man, glancing at the orator.

“It is the Deputy Bowelt,” replied the officer.

“What sort of a man is he? Do you know anything of him?”

“An honest man; at least I believe so, Monseigneur.”

Hearing this character given of Bowelt, the young man showed signs of such a strange disappointment and evident dissatisfaction that the officer could not but remark it, and therefore added⁠—

“At least people say so, Monseigneur. I cannot say anything about it myself, as I have no personal acquaintance with Mynheer Bowelt.”

“An honest man,” repeated he who was addressed as Monseigneur; “do you mean to say that he is an honest man (brave homme), or a brave one (homme brave)?”

“Ah, Monseigneur must excuse me; I would not presume to draw such a fine distinction in the case of a man whom, I assure your Highness once more, I know only by sight.”

“If this Bowelt is an honest man,” his Highness continued, “he will give to the demand of these furibund petitioners a very queer reception.”

The nervous quiver of his hand, which moved on the shoulder of his companion as the fingers of a player on the keys of a harpsichord, betrayed his burning impatience, so ill concealed at certain times, and particularly at that moment, under the icy and sombre expression of his face.

The chief of the deputation of the burghers was then heard addressing an interpellation to Mynheer Bowelt, whom he requested to let them know where the other deputies, his colleagues, were.

“Gentlemen,” Bowelt repeated for the second time, “I assure you that in