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"Be on your guard, friend Gryphus; be on your guard as long as you please; my conspiracy, as well as my person, is entirely at your service." "We'll see that at noon." Saying this, Gryphus went out. "At noon?" repeated Cornelius; "what does that mean? Well, let us wait until the clock strikes twelve, and we shall see."
"Here is your breakfast." "Thank you, friend Cerberus," said the prisoner; "you are just in time; I am very hungry." "Oh! you are hungry, are you?" said Gryphus. "And why not?" asked Van Baerle. "The conspiracy seems to thrive," remarked Gryphus. "What conspiracy?" "Very well, I know what I know, Master Scholar; just be quiet, we shall be on our guard."
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.
"Well, and once having strangled him, why should I not take his keys from him, why not go down the stairs as if I had done the most virtuous action, why not go and fetch Rosa from her room, why not tell her all, and jump from her window into the Waal? I am expert enough as a swimmer to save both of us. Rosa, but, oh Heaven, Gryphus is her father!
The pigeons were still there, but hope was not there; there was no future to look forward to. Alas! Rosa, being watched, was no longer able to come. Could she not write? and if so, could she convey her letters to him? No, no. He had seen during the two preceding days too much fury and malignity in the eyes of old Gryphus to expect that his vigilance would relax, even for one moment.
He first went to her room, but, loud as he knocked, Rosa answered not. The locksmith of the fortress was sent for; he opened the door, but Gryphus no more found Rosa than she had found the tulip. At that very moment she entered Rotterdam. Gryphus therefore had just as little chance of finding her in the kitchen as in her room, and just as little in the garden as in the kitchen.
"God will watch over them, and I shall watch over you." Gryphus followed his daughter, and the trap-door closed over his head, just as the broken gate gave admittance to the populace.
Besides thus offering a bait to the ambition of the father, he managed, at the same time, to interest his zeal as a jailer, picturing to him in the blackest colours the learned prisoner whom Gryphus had in his keeping, and who, as the sham Jacob had it, was in league with Satan, to the detriment of his Highness the Prince of Orange.
At eight in the morning, the door of his cell opened; but Cornelius did not even turn his head; he had heard the heavy step of Gryphus in the lobby, but this step had perfectly satisfied the prisoner that his jailer was coming alone. Thus Cornelius did not even look at Gryphus. And yet he would have been so glad to draw him out, and to inquire about Rosa.
It was the beautiful young Frisian, who, seeing her father stretched on the ground, and the prisoner bending over him, uttered a faint cry, as in the first fright she thought Gryphus, whose brutality she well knew, had fallen in consequence of a struggle between him and the prisoner.
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