Then a letter was given to Craeke, John de Witt's faithful servant, who
at once set off for Dordrecht, and within a few minutes the two brothers
were driving away to the city gate. Rosa, the gaoler's daughter, unknown
to her father, had opened the postern, and had herself bidden De Witt's
coachman drive round to the rear of the prison, and by this means the
fury of the mob was, for the moment, evaded.
And now the clamour of the Orangists was at the prison door, for Tilly's
horse had withdrawn on an order signed by the deputies in the town hall,
and the people were raging to get within the Buytenhof.
The mob burst open the great gate, and yelling, "Death to the traitors!
To the gallows with Cornelius de Witt!" poured in, only to find the
prisoner had escaped. But the escape was but from the prison, for the
city gate was locked when the carriage of the De Witts drove up, locked
by order of the deputies of the Town Hall, and a certain young man--who
was none other than William, Prince of Orange--held the key.
Before another gate could be reached the mob, streaming from the
Buytenhof, had overtaken the carriage, and the De Witts were at its
mercy.
The two men, whose lives had been spent in the welfare of their country,
were massacred with unspeakable savagery, and their bodies, stripped,
and hacked almost beyond recognition, were then strung up on a hastily
erected gibbet in the market-place.
When the worst had been done, the young man, who had secretly watched
the proceedings from the window of a neighbouring house, returned the
key to the gatekeeper.
Then the prince mounted a horse which an equerry held in waiting for
him, and galloped off to camp to await the message of the States. He
galloped proudly, for the burghers of The Hague had made of the corpses
of the De Witts a stepping stone to power for William of Orange.
_II.--Betrayed for his Bulbs_
Doctor Cornelius van Baerle, the godson of Cornelius de Witt, was in his
twenty-eighth year, an orphan, but nevertheless, a really happy man. His
father had amassed a fortune of 400,000 guilders in trade with the
Indies, and an estate brought him in 10,000 guilders a year. He was
blessed with the love of a peaceful life with good nerves, ample wealth,
and a philosophic mind.
Left alone in the big house at Dordrecht, he steadily resisted all
temptations to public life. He took up the study of botany, and then,
not knowing what to do with his time and money, decided to go in for one
of the most extravagant hobbies of the time--the cultivation of his
favourite flower, the tulip. The fame of Mynheer van Baerle's tulips
soon spread in the district, and while Cornelius de Witt had roused
deadly hatred by sowing the seeds of political passion, Van Baerle with
his tulips won general goodwill. Yet, all unknowingly, Van Baerle had
made an enemy, an implacable, relentless enemy. This was his neighbour,
Isaac Boxtel, who lived next door to him in Dordrecht.
Boxtel, from childhood, had been a passionate tulip-grower. He had even
produced a tulip of his own, and the Boxtel had won wide admiration. One
day, to his horror, Boxtel discovered that his next-door neighbour, the
wealthy Mynheer van Baerle, was also a tulip-grower. In bitter anguish
Boxtel foresaw that he had a rival who, with all the resources at his
command, might equal and possibly surpass the famous Boxtel creations.
He almost choked with envy, and from the moment of his discovery lived
under continual fear. The healthy pastime of tulip growing became, under
these conditions, a morbid and evil occupation for Boxtel, while Van
Baerle, on the other hand, totally unaware of the enmity brewing, threw
himself into the business with the keenest zest, taking for his motto
the old aphorism, "To despise flowers is to insult God."
So fierce was the envy that seized Boxtel that though he would have
shrunk from the infamy of destroying a tulip, he would have killed the
man who grew them. His own plants were neglected; it was useless and
hopeless to contend against so wealthy a rival. Then Boxtel, fascinated
by his evil passion, bought a telescope, and, perched on a ladder,
studied Van Baerle's tulip beds and the drying-room, the tulip-grower's
sacred place.
One night he lost all moral control, and tying the hind legs of two cats
together with a piece of string, he flung the animals into Van Baerle's
garden. To Boxtel's bitter mortification the cats, though they made
havoc of many precious plants before they broke the string, left the
four finest tulips untouched.
Shortly afterwards the Haarlem Tulip Society offered a prize of 100,000
guilders to whomsoever should produce a large black tulip, without spot
or blemish. Van Baerle at once thought out the idea of the black tulip.
He had already achieved a dark brown one, while Boxtel, who had only
managed to produce a light brown one, gave up the quest as impossible,
and could do nothing but spy on his neighbour's activities.
One evening in January 1672, Cornelius de Witt came to see his grandson,
Cornelius van Baerle, and went with him alone into the sacred drying-
room, the laboratory of the tulip-grower. Boxtel, with his telescope,
recognised the well-known features of the statesman, and presently he
saw him hand his godson a packet, which the latter put carefully away in
a cabinet. This packet contained the correspondence of John de Witt and
M. de Louvois.
Cornelius drove away, and Boxtel wondered what the packet contained. It
could hardly be bulbs; it must be secret papers.
It was not till August, as we know, that Craeke was despatched to Van
Baerle with the note bidding him destroy the packet.
Craeke arrived just when Van Baerle was nursing his precious bulbs--the
bulbs of the black tulip--and his sudden entrance rudely disturbed the
tulip-grower. He had not time to read the note; indeed, he was too much
concerned with the welfare of his three particular bulbs to trouble
about it, before a magistrate and some soldiers entered to arrest him.
Van Baerle wrapped up the bulbs in the note from his godfather, and was
sent off under close custody to The Hague. The magistrate carried off
the packet from the cabinet.
All this was Boxtel's work. It was he who had reported to the magistrate
the visit of De Witt and the placing of the packet in a cabinet. And
now, with Van Baerle out of the house as a prisoner, Boxtel in the dead
of night broke into his neighbour's house, to secure the priceless bulbs
of the black tulip. He had made out where they were growing, and he
plunged his hands into the soft soil--only to find nothing. Then the
wretched man guessed that the bulbs had gone with the prisoner to The
Hague, and decided to go in pursuit. Van Baerle could only keep them
while he was alive, and then--they should be his, Isaac Boxtel's.
_III.--The Theft of the Tulip_
Van Baerle was placed in the cell occupied by Cornelius de Witt in the
Buytenhof. Outside, in the market-place, the bodies of the De Witts were
hanging, and Van Baerle read with horror the inscription, "Here hang
that great rascal John de Witt and the little rascal Cornelius de Witt,
enemies of their country."
Gryphus laughed when the prisoner asked him what it meant, and replied,
"That's what happens to those that write secret letters to the enemies
of the Prince of Orange."
A terrible despair fell on Van Baerle, but he refused to escape when
Rosa, the gaoler's beautiful daughter, suggested it to him. He was
brought to trial, and though he denied all knowledge of the
correspondence, his goods were confiscated, and he was condemned to
death. He bequeathed his three tulip bulbs to Rosa, explained how she
must get a certain soil from Dordrecht, and went out calmly to die. On
the scaffold Van Baerle was reprieved and sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment, for the Prince of Orange shrank from further bloodshed.
One spectator in the crowd was bitterly disappointed. This was Boxtel,
who had bribed the headsman to let him have Van Baerle's clothes,
believing that he would thus obtain the priceless bulbs.
Van Baerle was sent to the prison of Loewenstein, and in February 1673,
when he was thinking his tulips lost for ever, he heard Rosa's voice.
Gryphus had applied for the gaolership of Loewenstein, and had been
appointed.
Nothing could persuade him that if Van Baerle was not a traitor he was
certainly in league with the devil, like all learned men, and he did all
he could to mortify and annoy his prisoner. But Rosa would come every
night when her father, stupefied by gin, was asleep, and talk to
Cornelius through the barred grating of his cell door.
He taught her to read, and together they planned how the tulip bulbs
should be brought to flower. One bulb Rosa was to plant, the second Van
Baerle would cultivate in his cell with soil placed in an old water jug,
and the third was to be kept in reserve.
Once more hope revived in Baerle's mind, but Rosa often suffered
vexation because Cornelius thought more of his black tulip than of her.
In the meantime Boxtel, under the assumed name of Jacob Gisels, had made
his way to Loewenstein in pursuit of the bulbs, and had ingratiated
himself with Gryphus, offering to marry his daughter. Rosa's tulip had
to be guarded from Gisels, who was always spying on her movements. She
kept it in her room for safety, but Boxtel had a key made, and the day
the tulip flowered, and arose a spotless black, he resolved to take it
at once, and rush to Haarlem and claim the prize.
The day came. Rosa described to Cornelius the wonderful black tulip, and
they drew up a letter to the president of the Horticultural Society at
Haarlem, begging him to come and fetch the wonderful flower.
That very night while Cornelius and Rosa rejoiced as lovers--for now
even Rosa was convinced of the prisoner's love for her--over the
happiness of the flowering tulip, Boxtel crept into her room, and
carried off the black tulip to Haarlem.
As for Van Baerle, he was beside himself with the rage of desperation
when Rosa told him that the black tulip had been stolen. Rosa, bent on
recovering the tulip, and certain in her own mind as to the thief,
hastened away from Loewenstein the next day without a word, Gryphus was
mad when he learnt his daughter was nowhere to be found, and put down
the mysterious disappearance of Jacob Gisels and Rosa to the work of the
devil, and was convinced that Van Baerle was the devil's agent.
The third day after the theft Gryphus, armed with a stick and a knife,
attacked Cornelius, calling out, "Give me back my daughter." Cornelius
got hold of the stick, forced Gryphus to drop the knife, and then
proceeded to give the gaoler a thrashing. The noise brought in turnkeys
and guards, who speedily carried off the wounded gaoler and arrested Van
Baerle. To comfort the prisoner they assured him he would certainly be
shot within twelve hours.
Then an officer, an aide-de-camp of the Prince of Orange, entered,
escorted Van Baerle to the prison gate, and bade him enter a carriage.
Believing himself about to die, he thought sadly of Rosa and of the
tulip he was never to see again. The carriage rolled off, and they
travelled all that day and night until the journey ended at Haarlem.
_IV.--The Triumph of the Tulip_
Rosa reached Haarlem just four hours after Boxtel's arrival, and she
went at once to seek an interview with Mynheer van Systens, the
President of the Horticultural Society. Immediate admittance was granted
on her mentioning the magic words "black tulip."
"Sir, the black tulip has been stolen from me," said Rosa.
"But I only saw it two hours ago!" replied the president.
"You saw it--where?"
"Why, at your master's! Are you not in the service of Mynheer Isaac
Boxtel?"
"I, sir? Certainly not! But this Isaac Boxtel, is he a thin,
bald-headed, bow-legged, crook-backed, haggard-looking man?"
"You have described him exactly."
"He is the thief; he stole the black tulip from me."
"Well, go and find Mynheer Boxtel--he is at the White Swan Inn, and
settle it with him." And with that the president took up his pen and
went on writing, for he was busy over his report.
But Rosa still implored him, and while she was speaking the Prince of
Orange entered the building. Rosa told everything, how she had received
the bulb from the prisoner at Loewenstein, and how she had first seen
the prisoner at The Hague. Then Boxtel was sent for. He was ready with
his tale. The girl had plotted with her lover, the state prisoner,
Cornelius van Baerle, and had stolen his--Boxtel's--black tulip, which
he had unwisely mentioned. However, he had recovered it.
A thought struck Rosa.
"There were three bulbs. What has become of the others?" she asked.
"One failed, the second produced the black tulip, and the third is at
home at Dordrecht," said Boxtel uneasily.
"You lie; it is here!" cried Rosa. And she drew from her bosom the third
bulb, still wrapped in the same paper Van Baerle had so hastily put
round the bulbs on his flight. "Take it, my lord," she said, handing it
to the prince. And then, glancing at the paper for the first time, she
added, "Oh, my lord, read this!"
William passed the third bulb to the president, and read the paper
carefully. It was Cornelius de Witt's letter to his godson, exhorting
him to burn the packet without opening it. It was the proof of Van
Baerle's innocence and of his ownership of the bulbs.
"Go, Mynheer Boxtel; you shall have justice. And you, Mynheer van
Systens, take care of this maiden and of the tulip," said the prince.
That same evening the prince summoned Rosa to the town hall, and talked
to her. Rosa did not deny her love for Cornelius.
"But what is the good of loving a man condemned to live and die in
prison?" the prince asked.
"I can help him to live and die," came the answer.
The prince sealed a letter, and sent it off to Loewenstein by Colonel
van Deken. Then he turned to Rosa, and said, "The day after to-morrow is
Sunday, and it will be the festival of the tulip. Take these 500
guilders, and dress yourself in the costume of a Friesland bride, for I
want it to be a grand festival for you."
Sunday came, May 15, 1673, and all Haarlem gathered to do honour to the
black tulip. Boxtel was in the crowd, feasting his eyes on the sacred
flower, which was born aloft in a litter. The procession stopped, and
the flower was placed on a pedestal, while the people cheered with wild
enthusiasm. At the solemn moment when the Prince of Orange was to
acclaim the triumphant owner of the black tulip and present the prize of
100,000 guilders, the coach with the unhappy prisoner Cornelius van
Baerle drew up in the market-place.
Cornelius, hearing that the celebration of the black tulip was actually
proceeding, besought his guard to let him have one glimpse of the
flower; and the petition was granted by the Prince of Orange.
From a distance of six paces Van Baerle gazed at the black tulip, and
then he, with the multitude, turned his eyes towards the prince. In dead
silence the prince declared the occasion of the festival, the discovery
of the wonderful black tulip, and concluded, "Let the owner of the black
tulip approach."
Cornelius made an involuntary movement. Boxtel and Rosa rushed forward
from the crowd.
The prince turned to Rosa. "This tulip is yours, is it not?" he said.
"Yes, my lord," she answered softly. And general applause came from the
crowd.
"This tulip will henceforth bear the name of its producer, and will be
called _Tulipa nigra Rosa Baerttensis_, because Van Baerle is to be the
married name of this damsel," the prince announced; and at the same time
he took Rosa's hand and placed it within the hand of the prisoner, who
had rushed forward at the words he had heard.
Boxtel fell down in a fit, and when they raised him up he was dead.
The procession returned to the town hall, the prince declared Rosa the
prizewinner, and informed Cornelius that, having been wrongfully
condemned, his property was restored to him. Then he entered his coach,
and was driven away.
Cornelius and Rosa departed for Dordrecht, and Van Baerle remained ever
faithful to his wife and his tulips.
As for old Gryphus, after being the roughest gaoler of men, he lived to
be the fiercest guardian of tulips at Dordrecht.
* * * * *