The Black Tulip. Dumas Alexandre

to exile, and to carry him out of the town.”

      Whereupon the jailer, a sort of bear, trained to lock and unlock the gates of the prison, had greeted him and admitted him into the building, the doors of which were immediately closed again.

      Ten yards farther on, John de Witt met a lovely young girl, of about seventeen or eighteen, dressed in the national costume of the Frisian women, who, with pretty demureness, dropped a curtesy to him. Chucking her under the chin, he said to her, —

      “Good morning, my good and fair Rosa; how is my brother?”

      “Oh, Mynheer John!” the young girl replied, “I am not afraid of the harm which has been done to him. That’s all over now.”

      “But what is it you are afraid of?”

      “I am afraid of the harm which they are going to do to him.”

      “Oh, yes,” said De Witt, “you mean to speak of the people down below, don’t you?”

      “Do you hear them?”

      “They are indeed in a state of great excitement; but when they see us perhaps they will grow calmer, as we have never done them anything but good.”

      “That’s unfortunately no reason, except for the contrary,” muttered the girl, as, on an imperative sign from her father, she withdrew.

      “Indeed, child, what you say is only too true.”

      Then, in pursuing his way, he said to himself, —

      “Here is a damsel who very likely does not know how to read, who consequently has never read anything, and yet with one word she has just told the whole history of the world.”

      And with the same calm mien, but more melancholy than he had been on entering the prison, the Grand Pensionary proceeded towards the cell of his brother.

      Chapter 2. The Two Brothers

      As the fair Rosa, with foreboding doubt, had foretold, so it happened. Whilst John de Witt was climbing the narrow winding stairs which led to the prison of his brother Cornelius, the burghers did their best to have the troop of Tilly, which was in their way, removed.

      Seeing this disposition, King Mob, who fully appreciated the laudable intentions of his own beloved militia, shouted most lustily, —

      “Hurrah for the burghers!”

      As to Count Tilly, who was as prudent as he was firm, he began to parley with the burghers, under the protection of the cocked pistols of his dragoons, explaining to the valiant townsmen, that his order from the States commanded him to guard the prison and its approaches with three companies.

      “Wherefore such an order? Why guard the prison?” cried the Orangists.

      “Stop,” replied the Count, “there you at once ask me more than I can tell you. I was told, ‘Guard the prison,’ and I guard it. You, gentlemen, who are almost military men yourselves, you are aware that an order must never be gainsaid.”

      “But this order has been given to you that the traitors may be enabled to leave the town.”

      “Very possibly, as the traitors are condemned to exile,” replied Tilly.

      “But who has given this order?”

      “The States, to be sure!”

      “The States are traitors.”

      “I don’t know anything about that!”

      “And you are a traitor yourself!”

      “I?”

      “Yes, you.”

      “Well, as to that, let us understand each other gentlemen. Whom should I betray? The States? Why, I cannot betray them, whilst, being in their pay, I faithfully obey their orders.”

      As the Count was so indisputably in the right that it was impossible to argue against him, the mob answered only by redoubled clamour and horrible threats, to which the Count opposed the most perfect urbanity.

      “Gentlemen,” he said, “uncock your muskets, one of them may go off by accident; and if the shot chanced to wound one of my men, we should knock over a couple of hundreds of yours, for which we should, indeed, be very sorry, but you even more so; especially as such a thing is neither contemplated by you nor by myself.”

      “If you did that,” cried the burghers, “we should have a pop at you, too.”

      “Of course you would; but suppose you killed every man Jack of us, those whom we should have killed would not, for all that, be less dead.”

      “Then leave the place to us, and you will perform the part of a good citizen.”

      “First of all,” said the Count, “I am not a citizen, but an officer, which is a very different thing; and secondly, I am not a Hollander, but a Frenchman, which is more different still. I have to do with no one but the States, by whom I am paid; let me see an order from them to leave the place to you, and I shall only be too glad to wheel off in an instant, as I am confoundedly bored here.”

      “Yes, yes!” cried a hundred voices; the din of which was immediately swelled by five hundred others; “let us march to the Town-hall; let us go and see the deputies! Come along! come along!”

      “That’s it,” Tilly muttered between his teeth, as he saw the most violent among the crowd turning away; “go and ask for a meanness at the Town-hall, and you will see whether they will grant it; go, my fine fellows, go!”

      The worthy officer relied on the honour of the magistrates, who, on their side, relied on his honour as a soldier.

      “I say, Captain,” the first lieutenant whispered into the ear of the Count, “I hope the deputies will give these madmen a flat refusal; but, after all, it would do no harm if they would send us some reinforcement.”

      In the meanwhile, John de Witt, whom we left climbing the stairs, after the conversation with the jailer Gryphus and his daughter Rosa, had reached the door of the cell, where on a mattress his brother Cornelius was resting, after having undergone the preparatory degrees of the torture. The sentence of banishment having been pronounced, there was no occasion for inflicting the torture extraordinary.

      Cornelius was stretched on his couch, with broken wrists and crushed fingers. He had not confessed a crime of which he was not guilty; and now, after three days of agony, he once more breathed freely, on being informed that the judges, from whom he had expected death, were only condemning him to exile.

      Endowed with an iron frame and a stout heart, how would he have disappointed his enemies if they could only have seen, in the dark cell of the Buytenhof, his pale face lit up by the smile of the martyr, who forgets the dross of this earth after having obtained a glimpse of the bright glory of heaven.

      The warden, indeed, had already recovered his full strength, much more owing to the force of his own strong will than to actual aid; and he was calculating how long the formalities of the law would still detain him in prison.

      This was just at the very moment when the mingled shouts of the burgher guard and of the mob were raging against the two brothers, and threatening Captain Tilly, who served as a rampart to them. This noise, which roared outside of the walls of the prison, as the surf dashing against the rocks, now reached the ears of the prisoner.

      But, threatening as it sounded, Cornelius appeared not to deem it worth his while to inquire after its cause; nor did he get up to look out of the narrow grated window, which gave access to the light and to the noise of the world without.

      He was so absorbed in his never-ceasing pain that it had almost become a habit with him. He felt with such delight the bonds which connected his immortal being with his perishable frame gradually loosening, that it seemed to him as if his spirit, freed from the trammels of the body, were hovering above it, like the expiring flame which rises from the half-extinguished embers.

      He also thought of his brother; and whilst the latter was thus vividly present to his mind the door opened, and John entered, hurrying to the bedside of the prisoner, who stretched out his broken limbs