Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/157

 “Well, and what then?”

“What then? We shall do, as he does.”

“Oh!” said Rosa with a sigh, “you are very fond of your bulbs.”

“To tell the truth,” said the prisoner, sighing likewise, “since your father crushed that unfortunate bulb, I feel as if part of my own self had been paralysed.”

“Now just hear me,” said Rosa; “will you try something else?”

“What?”

“Will you accept the proposition of my father?”

“Which proposition?”

“Did not he offer to you tulip-bulbs by hundreds?”

“Indeed he did.”

“Accept two or three and, along with them, you may grow the third sucker.”

“Yes, that would do very well,” said Cornelius, knitting his brow, “if your father were alone; but there is that Master Jacob, who watches all our ways.”

“Well, that is true; but only think! you are depriving yourself, as I can easily see, of a very great pleasure.”

She pronounced these words with a smile, which was not altogether without a tinge of irony.

Cornelius reflected for a moment; he evidently was struggling against some vehement desire.

“No!” he cried at last, with the stoicism of a Roman of old, “no, it would be a weakness, it would be a folly, it would be a meanness! If I thus gave up the only and last resource which we possess, to the uncertain chances of the bad passions of anger and envy, I should never deserve to be forgiven. No, Rosa, no; to-morrow we shall come to a conclusion as to the spot to be chosen for your tulip; you will plant it according to my instructions; and as to the third sucker”—Cornelius here