Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/55

 having buried his wife, who seemed to have departed first to smooth for him the path of death as she had smoothed for him the path of life, he said to his son, as he embraced him for the last time,—

“Eat, drink, and spend your money, if you wish to know what life really is, for as to toiling from morn to evening on a wooden stool, or a leathern chair, in a counting-house or a laboratory, that certainly is not living. Your time to die will also come; and if you are not then so fortunate as to have a son, you will let my name grow extinct, and my guilders, which no one has ever fingered but my father, myself, and the coiner, will have the surprise of passing to an unknown master. And least of all, imitate the example of your godfather, Cornelius de Witte, who has plunged into politics, the most ungrateful of all careers, and who will certainly come to an untimely end.”

Having given utterance to this paternal advice, the worthy Mynheer van Baerle died, to the intense grief of his son Cornelius, who cared very little for the guilders, and very much for his father.

Cornelius, then, remained alone in his large house. In vain his godfather offered to him a place in the public service; in vain did he try to give him a taste for glory. Cornelius Van Baerle, who was present in De Ruyter’s flagship, “The Seven Provinces,” at the battle of Southwold Bay, only calculated, after the fight was over, how much time a man, who likes to shut himself up within his own thoughts, is obliged to waste in closing his eyes and stopping his ears, whilst his fellow. creatures indulge in the pleasure of shooting at each other with cannon-balls. He, therefore, bade farewell to De Ruyter, to his godfather, and to glory; kissed the hands of the Grand Pensionary, for whom he felt a profound veneration, and retired to his house at Dort,