Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/250

 thousand guilders in glittering gold pieces, towards which he was constantly squinting, fearful of losing sight of them for one moment.

Another quarter of an hour and the Prince will arrive, and the procession will halt for the last time; after the tulip is placed on its throne, the Prince, yielding precedence to this rival for the popular adoration, will take a magnificently-emblazoned parchment, on which is written the name of the grower; and His Highness, in a loud and audible tone, will proclaim him to be the discoverer of a wonder that Holland, by the instrumentality of him, Boxtel, has forced nature to produce a black flower, which shall henceforth be called Tulipa nigra Boxtellea.

From time to time, however, Boxtel withdrew his eyes for a moment from the tulip and the purse, timidly looking among the crowd, for, more than anything, he dreaded to descry there the pale face of the pretty Frisian girl.

She would have been a spectre spoiling the joy of the festival for him, just as Banquo’s ghost did that of Macbeth.

And yet, if the truth must be told, this wretch, who had stolen what was the boast of a man, and the dowry of a woman, did not consider himself as a thief. He had so intently watched this tulip, followed it so eagerly from the drawer in Cornelius’s dry-room to the scaffold of the Buitenhof, and from the scaffold to the fortress of Lœvestein; he had seen it bud and grow in Rosa’s window, and so often warmed the air round it with his breath, that he felt as if no one had a better right to call himself its producer than he had; and any one who would now take the black tulip from him, would have appeared to him as a thief.

Yet he did not perceive Rosa; his joy, therefore, was not spoiled.

In the centre of a circle of magnificent trees, which were decorated with garlands and inscriptions, the procession halted, amidst the sounds of lively music; and the young damsels of Haarlem made their appearance