The Black Tulip | Page 6

having undergone the preparatory degrees of the
torture. The sentence of banishment having been pronounced, there was
no occasion for inflicting the torture extraordinary.
Cornelius was stretched on his couch, with broken wrists and crushed
fingers. He had not confessed a crime of which he was not guilty; and
now, after three days of agony, he once more breathed freely, on being
informed that the judges, from whom he had expected death, were only
condemning him to exile.
Endowed with an iron frame and a stout heart, how would he have
disappointed his enemies if they could only have seen, in the dark cell

of the Buytenhof, his pale face lit up by the smile of the martyr, who
forgets the dross of this earth after having obtained a glimpse of the
bright glory of heaven.
The warden, indeed, had already recovered his full strength, much more
owing to the force of his own strong will than to actual aid; and he was
calculating how long the formalities of the law would still detain him in
prison.
This was just at the very moment when the mingled shouts of the
burgher guard and of the mob were raging against the two brothers, and
threatening Captain Tilly, who served as a rampart to them. This noise,
which roared outside of the walls of the prison, as the surf dashing
against the rocks, now reached the ears of the prisoner.
But, threatening as it sounded, Cornelius appeared not to deem it worth
his while to inquire after its cause; nor did he get up to look out of the
narrow grated window, which gave access to the light and to the noise
of the world without.
He was so absorbed in his never-ceasing pain that it had almost become
a habit with him. He felt with such delight the bonds which connected
his immortal being with his perishable frame gradually loosening, that
it seemed to him as if his spirit, freed from the trammels of the body,
were hovering above it, like the expiring flame which rises from the
half-extinguished embers.
He also thought of his brother; and whilst the latter was thus vividly
present to his mind the door opened, and John entered, hurrying to the
bedside of the prisoner, who stretched out his broken limbs and his
hands tied up in bandages towards that glorious brother, whom he now
excelled, not in services rendered to the country, but in the hatred
which the Dutch bore him.
John tenderly kissed his brother on the forehead, and put his sore hands
gently back on the mattress.
"Cornelius, my poor brother, you are suffering great pain, are you not?"

"I am suffering no longer, since I see you, my brother."
"Oh, my poor dear Cornelius! I feel most wretched to see you in such a
state."
"And, indeed, I have thought more of you than of myself; and whilst
they were torturing me, I never thought of uttering a complaint, except
once, to say, 'Poor brother!' But now that you are here, let us forget all.
You are coming to take me away, are you not?"
"I am."
"I am quite healed; help me to get up, and you shall see how I can
walk."
"You will not have to walk far, as I have my coach near the pond,
behind Tilly's dragoons."
"Tilly's dragoons! What are they near the pond for?"
"Well," said the Grand Pensionary with a melancholy smile which was
habitual to him, "the gentlemen at the Town-hall expect that the people
at the Hague would like to see you depart, and there is some
apprehension of a tumult."
"Of a tumult?" replied Cornelius, fixing his eyes on his perplexed
brother; "a tumult?"
"Yes, Cornelius."
"Oh! that's what I heard just now," said the prisoner, as if speaking to
himself. Then, turning to his brother, he continued, --
"Are there many persons down before the prison."
"Yes, my brother, there are."
"But then, to come here to me ---- "

"Well?"
"How is it that they have allowed you to pass?"
"You know well that we are not very popular, Cornelius," said the
Grand Pensionary, with gloomy bitterness. "I have made my way
through all sorts of bystreets and alleys."
"You hid yourself, John?"
"I wished to reach you without loss of time, and I did what people will
do in politics, or on the sea when the wind is against them, -- I tacked."
At this moment the noise in the square below was heard to roar with
increasing fury. Tilly was parleying with the burghers.
"Well, well," said Cornelius, "you are a very skilful pilot, John; but I
doubt whether you will as safely guide your brother out of the
Buytenhof in the midst of this gale, and through the raging