Chapter 7. The Happy Man makes Acquaintance with Misfortune
Cornelius de Witt, after having attended to his family affairs, reachedthe house of his godson, Cornelius van Baerle, one evening in the monthof January, 1672.
De Witt, although being very little of a horticulturist or of anartist, went over the whole mansion, from the studio to the green-house,inspecting everything, from the pictures down to the tulips. He thankedhis godson for having joined him on the deck of the admiral's ship "TheSeven Provinces," during the battle of Southwold Bay, and for havinggiven his name to a magnificent tulip; and whilst he thus, with thekindness and affability of a father to a son, visited Van Baerle'streasures, the crowd gathered with curiosity, and even respect, beforethe door of the happy man.
All this hubbub excited the attention of Boxtel, who was just taking hismeal by his fireside. He inquired what it meant, and, on being informedof the cause of all this stir, climbed up to his post of observation,where in spite of the cold, he took his stand, with the telescope to hiseye.
This telescope had not been of great service to him since the autumn of1671. The tulips, like true daughters of the East, averse to cold, donot abide in the open ground in winter. They need the shelter of thehouse, the soft bed on the shelves, and the congenial warmth of thestove. Van Baerle, therefore, passed the whole winter in his laboratory,in the midst of his books and pictures. He went only rarely to the roomwhere he kept his bulbs, unless it were to allow some occasional raysof the sun to enter, by opening one of the movable sashes of the glassfront.
On the evening of which we are speaking, after the two Corneliuses hadvisited together all the apartments of the house, whilst a train ofdomestics followed their steps, De Witt said in a low voice to VanBaerle,--
"My dear son, send these people away, and let us be alone for someminutes."
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 the profaneuninitiated.
Never had any of his servants been bold enough to set his foot there.Cornelius admitted only the inoffensive broom of an old Frisianhousekeeper, who had been his nurse, and who from the time when hehad devoted himself to the culture of tulips ventured no longer to putonions in his stews, for fear of pulling to pieces and mincing the idolof her foster child.
At the mere mention of the dry-room, therefore, the servants who werecarrying the lights respectfully fell back. Cornelius, taking thecandlestick from the hands of the foremost, conducted his godfather intothat room, which was no other than that very cabinet with a glass frontinto which 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 table on which VanBaerle had placed the taper.
In this figure, Boxtel recognised the pale features of Cornelius deWitt, whose long hair, parted in front, fell over his shoulders.
De Witt, after having said some few words to Cornelius, the meaning ofwhich the prying neighbour could not read in the movement of his lips,took from his breast pocket a white parcel, carefully sealed, whichBoxtel, judging from the manner in which Cornelius received it, andplaced it in one of the presses, supposed to contain papers of thegreatest importance.
His first thought was that this precious deposit enclosed some newlyimported bulbs from Bengal or Ceylon; but he soon reflected thatCornelius de Witt was very little addicted to tulip-growing, and thathe only occupied himself with the affairs of man, a pursuit by far lesspeaceful and agreeable than that of the florist. He therefore came tothe conclusion that the parcel contained simply some papers, and thatthese papers were relating to politics.
But why should papers of political import be intrusted to Van Baerle,who not only was, but also boasted of being, an entire stranger tothe science of government, which, in his opinion, was more occult thanalchemy itself?
It was undoubtedly a deposit which Cornelius de Witt, already threatenedby the unpopularity with which his countrymen were going to honour him,was placing in the hands of his godson; a contrivance so much the morecleverly devised, as it certainly was not at all likely that it shouldbe searched for at the house of one who had always stood aloof fromevery sort of intrigue.
And, besides, if the parcel had been made up of bulbs, Boxtel knew hisneighbour too well not to expect that Van Baerle would not have lost onemoment in satisfying his curiosity and feasting his eyes on the presentwhich he had received.
But, on the contrary, Cornelius had received the parcel from the handsof his godfather with every mark of respect, and put it by with the samerespectful manner in a drawer, stowing it away so that it should nottake up too much of the room which was reserved to his bulbs.
The parcel thus being secreted, Cornelius de Witt got up, pressed thehand of his godson, and turned towards the door, Van Baerle seizing thecandlestick, and lighting him on his way down to the street, which wasstill crowded with people who wished to see their great fellow citizengetting into his coach.
Boxtel had not been mistaken in his supposition. The deposit intrustedto Van Baerle, and carefully locked up by him, was nothing more nor lessthan John de Witt's correspondence with the Marquis de Louvois, the warminister of the King of France; only the godfather forbore giving to hisgodson the least intimation concerning the political importance of thesecret, merely desiring him not to deliver the parcel to any one but tohimself, or to whomsoever he should send to claim it in his name.
And Van Baerle, as we have seen, locked it up with his most preciousbulbs, to think no more of it, after his godfather had left him; veryunlike Boxtel, who looked upon this parcel as a clever pilot does on thedistant and scarcely perceptible cloud which is increasing on its wayand which is fraught with a storm.
Little dreaming of the jealous hatred of his neighbour, Van Baerlehad proceeded step by step towards gaining the prize offered by theHorticultural Society of Haarlem. He had progressed from hazel-nut shadeto that of roasted coffee, and on the very day when the frightful eventstook place at the Hague which we have related in the preceding chapters,we find him, about one o'clock in the day, gathering from the border theyoung suckers raised from tulips of the colour of roasted coffee; andwhich, being expected to flower for the first time in the spring of1675, would undoubtedly produce the large black tulip required by theHaarlem Society.
On the 20th of August, 1672, at one o'clock, Cornelius was therefore inhis dry-room, with his feet resting on the foot-bar of the table, andhis elbows on the cover, looking with intense delight on three suckerswhich he had just detached 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 van Baerle forever illustrious.
"I shall find the black tulip," said Cornelius to himself, whilstdetaching the suckers. "I shall obtain the hundred thousand guildersoffered by the Society. I shall distribute them among the poor of Dort;and thus the hatred which every rich man has to encounter in times ofcivil wars will be soothed down, and I shall be able, without fearingany harm either from Republicans or Orangists, to keep as heretofore myborders in splendid condition. I need no more be afraid lest on the dayof a riot the shopkeepers of the town and the sailors of the port shouldcome and tear out my bulbs, to boil them as onions for their families,as they have sometimes quietly threatened when they happened to remembermy having paid two or three hundred guilders for one bulb. It istherefore settled I shall give the hundred thousand guilders of theHaarlem prize to-the poor. And yet----"
Here Cornelius stopped and heaved a sigh. "And yet," he continued,"it would have been so very delightful to spend the hundred thousandguilders on the enlargement of my tulip-bed or even on a journey to theEast, the country of beau
tiful flowers. But, alas! these are no thoughtsfor the present times, when muskets, standards, proclamations, andbeating of drums are the order of the day."
Van Baerle raised his eyes to heaven and sighed again. Then turning hisglance towards his bulbs,--objects of much greater importance to himthan all those muskets, standards, drums, and proclamations, which heconceived only to be fit to disturb the minds of honest people,--hesaid:--
"These are, indeed, beautiful bulbs; how smooth they are, how wellformed; there is that air of melancholy about them which promises toproduce a flower of the colour of ebony. On their skin you cannoteven distinguish the circulating veins with the naked eye. Certainly,certainly, not a light spot will disfigure the tulip which I have calledinto existence. And by what name shall we call this offspring of mysleepless nights, of my labour and my thought? Tulipa nigra Barlaensis?
"Yes Barlaensis: a fine name. All the tulip-fanciers--that is to say,all the intelligent people of Europe--will feel a thrill of excitementwhen the rumour spreads to the four quarters of the globe: Thegrand black tulip is found! 'How is it called?' the fanciers willask.--'Tulipa nigra Barlaensis!'--'Why Barlaensis?'--'After its grower,Van Baerle,' will be the answer.--'And who is this Van Baerle?'--'It isthe same who has already produced five new tulips: the Jane, the Johnde Witt, the Cornelius de Witt, etc.' Well, that is what I call myambition. It will cause tears to no one. And people will talk ofmy Tulipa nigra Barlaensis when perhaps my godfather, this sublimepolitician, is only known from the tulip to which I have given his name.
"Oh! these darling bulbs!
"When my tulip has flowered," Baerle continued in his soliloquy, "andwhen tranquillity is restored in Holland, I shall give to the poor onlyfifty thousand guilders, which, after all, is a goodly sum for a man whois under no obligation whatever. Then, with the remaining fifty thousandguilders, I shall make experiments. With them I shall succeed inimparting scent to the tulip. Ah! if I succeed in giving it the odour ofthe rose or the carnation, or, what would be still better, a completelynew scent; if I restored to this queen of flowers its naturaldistinctive perfume, which she has lost in passing from her Eastern toher European throne, and which she must have in the Indian peninsula atGoa, Bombay, and Madras, and especially in that island which in oldentimes, as is asserted, was the terrestrial paradise, and which is calledCeylon,--oh, what glory! I must say, I would then rather be Corneliusvan Baerle than Alexander, Caesar, or Maximilian.
"Oh the admirable bulbs!"
Thus Cornelius indulged in the delights of contemplation, and wascarried away by the sweetest dreams.
Suddenly the bell of his cabinet was rung much more violently thanusual.
Cornelius, startled, laid his hands on his bulbs, and turned round.
"Who is here?" he asked.
"Sir," answered the servant, "it is a messenger from the Hague."
"A messenger from the Hague! What does he want?"
"Sir, it is Craeke."
"Craeke! the confidential servant of Mynheer John de Witt? Good, let himwait."
"I cannot wait," said a voice in the lobby.
And at the same time forcing his way in, Craeke rushed into thedry-room.
This abrupt entrance was such an infringement on the established rulesof the household of Cornelius van Baerle, that the latter, at the sightof Craeke, almost convulsively moved his hand which covered the bulbs,so that two of them fell on the floor, one of them rolling under a smalltable, and the other into the fireplace.
"Zounds!" said Cornelius, eagerly picking up his precious bulbs, "what'sthe matter?"
"The matter, sir!" said Craeke, laying a paper on the large table, onwhich the third bulb was lying,--"the matter is, that you are requestedto read this paper without losing one moment."
And Craeke, who thought he had remarked in the streets of Dort symptomsof a tumult similar to that which he had witnessed before his departurefrom the Hague, ran off without even looking behind him.
"All right! all right! my dear Craeke," said Cornelius, stretching hisarm under the table for the bulb; "your paper shall be read, indeed itshall."
Then, examining the bulb which he held in the hollow of his hand, hesaid: "Well, here is one of them uninjured. That confounded Craeke! thusto rush into my dry-room; let us now look after the other."
And without laying down the bulb which he already held, Baerle went tothe fireplace, knelt down and stirred with the tip of his finger theashes, which fortunately were quite cold.
He at once felt the other bulb.
"Well, here it is," he said; and, looking at it with almost fatherlyaffection, he exclaimed, "Uninjured as the first!"
At this very instant, and whilst Cornelius, still on his knees, wasexamining his pets, the door of the dry-room was so violently shaken,and opened in such a brusque manner, that Cornelius felt rising in hischeeks and his ears the glow of that evil counsellor which is calledwrath.
"Now, what is it again," he demanded; "are people going mad here?"
"Oh, sir! sir!" cried the servant, rushing into the dry-room with a muchpaler face and with a much more frightened mien than Craeke had shown.
"Well!" asked Cornelius, foreboding some mischief from the double breachof 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, grasping in his handsthe two bulbs, and directing his terrified glance towards the staircase.
"They are coming up! they are coming up!" cried the servant.
"Oh, my dear child, my worthy master!" cried the old housekeeper, whonow likewise made her appearance in the dry-room, "take your gold, yourjewelry, 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 and opened it, butseeing what havoc he would necessarily cause in his borders, and, morethan this, what a height he would have to jump, he called out, "Never!"and fell back a step.
At this moment they saw across the banister of the staircase the pointsof 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 aman, but as a tulip-fancier, his only thought was for his inestimablebulbs.
Looking about for a paper in which to wrap them up, he noticed thefly-leaf from the Bible, which Craeke had laid upon the table, took itwithout in his confusion remembering whence it came, folded in it thethree bulbs, secreted them in his bosom, and waited.
At this very moment the soldiers, preceded by a magistrate, entered theroom.
"Are you Dr. Cornelius van Baerle?" demanded the magistrate (who,although knowing the young man very well, put his question according tothe forms of justice, which gave his proceedings a much more dignifiedair).
"I am that person, Master van Spennen," answered Cornelius, politely, tohis judge, "and you know it very well."
"Then give up to us the seditious papers which you secrete in yourhouse."
"The seditious papers!" repeated Cornelius, quite dumfounded at theimputation.
"Now don't look astonished, if you please."
"I vow to you, Master van Spennen," Cornelius replied, "that I amcompletely at a loss to understand what you want."
"Then I shall put you in the way, Doctor," said the judge; "give up tous the papers which the traitor Cornelius de Witt deposited with you inth
e 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 have none of thatsort."
"You deny it then?"
"Certainly I do."
The magistrate turned round and took a rapid survey of the wholecabinet.
"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 of his papers.
"All right," he said, like a man who is sure of his ground.
Then, turning round towards Cornelius, he continued, "Will you give upthose papers to me?"
"But I cannot, Master van Spennen; those papers do not belong 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 youto open this drawer, and to give up to me the papers which it contains."
Saying this, the judge pointed with his finger to the third drawer ofthe press, near the fireplace.
In this very drawer, indeed the papers deposited by the Warden of theDikes with his godson were lying; a proof that the police had receivedvery exact information.
"Ah! you will not," said Van Spennen, when he saw Cornelius standingimmovable and bewildered, "then I shall open the drawer myself."
And, pulling out the drawer to its full length, the magistrate at firstalighted on about twenty bulbs, carefully arranged and ticketed, andthen on the paper parcel, which had remained in exactly the same stateas it was when delivered by the unfortunate Cornelius de Witt to hisgodson.
The magistrate broke the seals, tore off the envelope, cast an eagerglance on the first leaves which met his eye and then exclaimed, in aterrible voice,--
"Well, justice has been rightly informed after all!"
"How," said Cornelius, "how is this?"
"Don't pretend to be ignorant, Mynheer van Baerle," answered themagistrate. "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 of Orange; he hadnot 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 that before yourjudges."
"Where?"
"At the Hague."
Cornelius, in mute stupefaction, embraced his old nurse, who was ina swoon; shook hands with his servants, who were bathed in tears, andfollowed the magistrate, who put him in a coach as a prisoner of stateand had him driven at full gallop to the Hague.