meant, and, on being informed of 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 his eye.

This telescope had not been of great service to him since
the autumn of 1671. The tulips, like true daughters of the

East, averse to cold, do not abide in the open ground in
winter. They need the shelter of the house, the soft bed on

the shelves, and the congenialwarmth of the stove. Van
Baerle, therefore, passed the whole winter in his

laboratory, in the midst of his books and pictures. He went
only rarely to the room where he kept his bulbs, unless it

were to allow some occasional rays of the sun to enter, by
opening one of the movable sashes of the glass front.

On the evening of which we are speaking, after the two
Corneliuses had visited together all the apartments of the

house, whilst a train of domestics followed their steps, De
Witt said in a low voice to Van Baerle, --

"My dear son, send these people away, and let us be alone
for 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 the
tulip-fancier, was, as Delphi of old, interdicted to the

profane uninitiated.
Never had any of his servants been bold enough to set his

foot there. Cornelius admitted only the inoffensive broom of
an old Frisian housekeeper, who had been his nurse, and who

from the time when he had devoted himself to the culture of
tulips ventured no longer to put onions in his stews, for

fear of pulling to pieces and mincing the idol of her foster
child.

At the mere mention of the dry-room, therefore, the servants
who were carrying the lights respectfully" target="_blank" title="ad.恭敬地">respectfully fell back.

Cornelius, taking the candlestick from the hands of the
foremost, conducted his godfather into that room, which was

no other than that very cabinet with a glass front into
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 Van Baerle had placed the taper.
In this figure, Boxtel recognised the pale features of

Cornelius de Witt, whose long hair, parted in front, fell
over his shoulders.

De Witt, after having said some few words to Cornelius, the
meaning of which the prying neighbour could not read in the

movement of his lips, took from his breast pocket a white
parcel, carefully sealed, which Boxtel, judging from the

manner in which Cornelius received it, and placed it in one
of the presses, supposed to contain papers of the greatest

importance.
His first thought was that this precious deposit enclosed

some newly imported bulbs from Bengal or Ceylon; but he soon
reflected that Cornelius de Witt was very little addicted to

tulip-growing, and that he only occupied himself with the
affairs of man, a pursuit by far less peaceful and agreeable

than that of the florist. He therefore came to the
conclusion that the parcelcontained simply some papers, and

that these 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 to the science of government, which, in his

opinion, was more occult than alchemy itself?
It was undoubtedly a deposit which Cornelius de Witt,

already threatened by the unpopularity with which his
countrymen were going to honour him, was placing in the

hands of his godson; a contrivance so much the more cleverly
devised, as it certainly was not at all likely that it

should be searched for at the house of one who had always
stood 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 Van

Baerle would not have lost one moment in satisfying his
curiosity and feasting his eyes on the present which he had

received.
But, on the contrary, Cornelius had received the parcel from

the hands of his godfather with every mark of respect, and
put it by with the same respectful manner in a drawer,

stowing it away so that it should not take up too much of
the 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 his
way down to the street, which was still crowded with people

who wished to see their great fellow citizen getting into
his coach.

Boxtel had not been mistaken in his supposition. The deposit
intrusted to Van Baerle, and carefully locked up by him, was

nothing more nor less than John de Witt's correspondence
with the Marquis de Louvois, the war minister of the King of

France; only the godfather forbore giving to his godson the
least intimation concerning the political importance of the

secret, merely desiring him not to deliver the parcel to any
one but to himself, 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

precious bulbs, to think no more of it, after his godfather
had left him; very unlike Boxtel, who looked upon this

parcel as a clever pilot does on the distant and scarcely
perceptible cloud which is increasing on its way and which

is fraught with a storm.
Little dreaming of the jealoushatred of his neighbour, Van

Baerle had proceeded step by step towards gaining the prize
offered by the Horticultural Society of Haarlem. He had

progressed from hazel-nut shade to that of roasted coffee,
and on the very day when the frightful events took 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 the young suckers raised from tulips of the
colour of roasted coffee; and which, being expected to

flower for the first time in the spring of 1675, would
undoubtedly produce the large black tulip required by the

Haarlem Society.
On the 20th of August, 1672, at one o'clock, Cornelius was

therefore in his dry-room, with his feet resting on the
foot-bar of the table, and his elbows on the cover, looking

with intense delight on three suckers which he had just
detached from the mother bulb, pure, perfect, and entire,

and from which was to grow that wonderful produce of
horticulture which would render the name of Cornelius van

Baerle for ever illustrious.
"I shall find the black tulip," said Cornelius to himself,

whilst detaching the suckers. "I shall obtain the hundred
thousand guilders offered 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 of civil wars will be