th his servants, to remove
the inanimate remains of his friend.

The thing was, moreover, quite customary among the "faithful brethren,"
when one of their masters died a public death in the yard of the
Buytenhof.

A fanatic like Cornelius might very easily have found another fanatic
who would give a hundred guilders for his remains.

The executioner also readily acquiesced in the proposal, making only one
condition,--that of being paid in advance.

Boxtel, like the people who enter a show at a fair, might be
disappointed, and refuse to pay on going out.

Boxtel paid in advance, and waited.

After this, the reader may imagine how excited Boxtel was; with what
anxiety he watched the guards, the Recorder, and the executioner; and
with what intense interest he surveyed the movements of Van Baerle. How
would he place himself on the block? how would he fall? and would he
not, in falling, crush those inestimable bulbs? had not he at least
taken care to enclose them in a golden box,--as gold is the hardest of
all metals?

Every trifling delay irritated him. Why did that stupid executioner thus
lose time in brandishing his sword over the head of Cornelius, instead
of cutting that head off?

But when he saw the Recorder take the hand of the condemned, and raise
him, whilst drawing forth the parchment from his pocket,--when he heard
the pardon of the Stadtholder publicly read out,--then Boxtel was no
more like a human being; the rage and malice of the tiger, of the hyena,
and of the serpent glistened in his eyes, and vented itself in his yell
and his movements. Had he been able to get at Van Baerle, he would have
pounced upon him and strangled him.

And so, then, Cornelius was to live, and was to go with him to
Loewestein, and thither to his prison he would take with him his bulbs;
and perhaps he would even find a garden where the black tulip would
flower for him.

Boxtel, quite overcome by his frenzy, fell from the stone upon some
Orangemen, who, like him, were sorely vexed at the turn which affairs
had taken. They, mistaking the frantic cries of Mynheer Isaac for
demonstrations of joy, began to belabour him with kicks and cuffs, such
as could not have been administered in better style by any prize-fighter
on the other side of the Channel.

Blows were, however, nothing to him. He wanted to run after the coach
which was carrying away Cornelius with his bulbs. But in his hurry
he overlooked a paving-stone in his way,