Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
As to a letter, he certainly had some remembrance that some moments previous to his arrest, whilst he was absorbed in the contemplation of one of the rarest of his bulbs, John de Witt's servant entered his dry-room, and handed to him a paper, but the whole was to him only like a vague dream; the servant had disappeared, and as to the paper, perhaps it might be found if a proper search were made.
The Harvester was so hopeful that he whistled and sang on the return to Medicine Woods, and that night for the first time in many days he sat long over a candlestick, and took a farewell peep into her room before he went to bed. The next day he worked with all his might harvesting the last remnants of early spring herbs, in the dry-room and store-house, and on furniture and candlesticks.
There he would find them, and, moreover, it was not at all difficult, as the sashes of the dry-room might be raised like those of a greenhouse. Cornelius had opened them on that morning, and no one had thought of closing them again. Everything, therefore, depended upon whether he could procure a ladder of sufficient length, one of twenty-five feet instead of ten.
"Sir," answered the servant, "it is a messenger from the Hague." "A messenger from the Hague! What does he want?" "Sir, it is Craeke." "Craeke! the confidential servant of Mynheer John de Witt? Good, let him wait." "I cannot wait," said a voice in the lobby. And at the same time forcing his way in, Craeke rushed into the dry-room.
On the 20th of August, 1672, at one o'clock, Cornelius was therefore in his dry-room, with his feet resting on the foot-bar of the table, and his elbows on the cover, looking with intense delight on three suckers which he had just detached from the mother bulb, pure, perfect, and entire, and from which was to grow that wonderful produce of horticulture which would render the name of Cornelius van Baerle for ever illustrious.
Mad with rage, he returned to his ladder, mounted the wall, drew up the ladder, flung it into his own garden, and jumped after it. All at once, a last ray of hope presented itself to his mind: the seedling bulbs might be in the dry-room; it was therefore only requisite to make his entry there as he had done into the garden.
But, whether from a feeling of shame or from craven weakness, Isaac Boxtel did not venture that day to point his telescope either at the garden, or at the laboratory, or at the dry-room. He knew too well what was about to happen in the house of the poor doctor to feel any desire to look into it.
The first guilty act of Boxtel had been to climb over a wall in order to dig up the tulip; the second, to introduce himself into the dry-room of Cornelius, through an open window; and the third, to enter Rosa's room by means of a false key. Thus envy urged Boxtel on with rapid steps in the career of crime. Boxtel, as we have said, was alone with the tulip.
"My dear son, send these people away, and let us be alone for some minutes." The younger Cornelius, bowing assent, said aloud, "Would you now, sir, please to see my dry-room?" The dry-room, this pantheon, this sanctum sanctorum of the tulip-fancier, was, as Delphi of old, interdicted to the profane uninitiated. Never had any of his servants been bold enough to set his foot there.
"Halloa!" said Van Spennen, "you begin now to remember, don't you?" "Indeed I do, but you spoke of seditious papers, and I have none of that sort." "You deny it then?" "Certainly I do." The magistrate turned round and took a rapid survey of the whole cabinet. "Where is the apartment you call your dry-room?" he asked. "The very same where you now are, Master van Spennen."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking