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Updated: May 24, 2025
Gryphus made his three visits, and discovered nothing. He never came at the same hours as he hoped thus to discover the secrets of the prisoner. Van Baerle, therefore, had devised a contrivance, a sort of pulley, by means of which he was able to lower or to raise his jug below the ledge of tiles and stone before his window.
"What have you got here?" he roared. "Ah! have I caught you?" and with this he grabbed in the soil. "I? nothing, nothing," cried Cornelius, trembling. "Ah! have I caught you? a jug and earth in it There is some criminal secret at the bottom of all this." "Oh, my good Master Gryphus," said Van Baerle, imploringly, and anxious as the partridge robbed of her young by the reaper.
Seeing this, the pigeons emigrated from the roof of Isaac Boxtel to that of Cornelius van Baerle. The nurse was a kind-hearted woman, who could not live without something to love.
"When my tulip has flowered," Baerle continued in his soliloquy, "and when tranquillity is restored in Holland, I shall give to the poor only fifty thousand guilders, which, after all, is a goodly sum for a man who is under no obligation whatever. Then, with the remaining fifty thousand guilders, I shall make experiments. With them I shall succeed in imparting scent to the tulip.
She did not finish her speech, as a growl by her side interrupted her. "My father!" cried Rosa. "Gryphus!" roared Van Baerle. "Oh, you villain!" Old Gryphus, in the midst of all the noise, had ascended the staircase without being heard. He rudely seized his daughter by the wrist. "So you will take my keys?" he said, in a voice choked with rage.
The people were only dragging in the two corpses, which they came back to gibbet at the usual place of execution. Rosa hid herself this time also, but only that she might not see the ghastly spectacle. At midnight, people again knocked at the gate of the jail, or rather at the barricade which served in its stead: it was Cornelius van Baerle whom they were bringing.
But as, since the death of those two martyrs, Van Baerle had no longer any reason for withholding the truth, he not only did not deny that the parcel had been delivered to him by Cornelius de Witt himself, but he also stated all the circumstances under which it was done.
For, strange to say, the love and interest of horticulture had not deadened in Isaac his fierce envy and thirst of revenge. Sometimes, whilst covering Van Baerle with his telescope, he deluded himself into a belief that he was levelling a never-failing musket at him; and then he would seek with his finger for the trigger to fire the shot which was to have killed his neighbour.
It was about midnight when poor Van Baerle was locked up in the prison of the Buytenhof. What Rosa foresaw had come to pass. On finding the cell of Cornelius de Witt empty, the wrath of the people ran very high, and had Gryphus fallen into the hands of those madmen he would certainly have had to pay with his life for the prisoner.
This gave Van Baerle time to run to the door, and squeeze the hand of Rosa, who whispered to him, "At nine o'clock this evening."
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