t very likely to be found, and no one gave himself
the trouble to look for it.

Cornelius himself did not much press this point, since, even supposing
that the paper should turn up, it could not have any direct connection
with the correspondence which constituted the crime.

The judges wished to make it appear as though they wanted to urge
Cornelius to make a better defence; they displayed that benevolent
patience which is generally a sign of the magistrate's being interested
for the prisoner, or of a man's having so completely got the better of
his adversary that he needs no longer any oppressive means to ruin him.

Cornelius did not accept of this hypocritical protection, and in a last
answer, which he set forth with the noble bearing of a martyr and the
calm serenity of a righteous man, he said,--

"You ask me things, gentlemen, to which I can answer only the exact
truth. Hear it. The parcel was put into my hands in the way I have
described; I vow before God that I was, and am still, ignorant of its
contents, and that it was not until my arrest that I learned that this
deposit was the correspondence of the Grand Pensionary with the Marquis
de Louvois. And lastly, I vow and protest that I do not understand how
any one should have known that this parcel was in my house; and,
above all, how I can be deemed criminal for having received what my
illustrious and unfortunate godfather brought to my house."

This was Van Baerle's whole defence; after which the judges began to
deliberate on the verdict.

They considered that every offshoot of civil discord is mischievous,
because it revives the contest which it is the interest of all to put
down.

One of them, who bore the character of a profound observer, laid down
as his opinion that this young man, so phlegmatic in appearance, must
in reality be very dangerous, as under this icy exterior he was sure to
conceal an ardent desire to avenge his friends, the De Witts.

Another observed that the love of tulips agreed perfectly well with that
of politics, and that it was proved in history that many very dangerous
men were engaged in gardening, just as if it had been their profession,
whilst really they occupied themselves with perfectly different
concerns; witness Tarquin the Elder, who grew poppies at Gabii, and the
Great Conde, who watered his carnations at the dungeon of Vincennes at
the very moment when the former meditated his return to Rome, and the
latter his escap