behind a forest of
chimneys, he saw flocks of pigeons coming from that quarter to perch
fluttering on the pointed gables of Loewestein.

These pigeons, Van Baerle said to himself, are coming from Dort, and
consequently may return there. By fastening a little note to the wing of
one of these pigeons, one might have a chance to send a message there.
Then, after a few moments' consideration, he exclaimed,--

"I will do it."

A man grows very patient who is twenty-eight years of age, and condemned
to a prison for life,--that is to say, to something like twenty-two or
twenty-three thousand days of captivity.

Van Baerle, from whose thoughts the three bulbs were never absent,
made a snare for catching the pigeons, baiting the birds with all the
resources of his kitchen, such as it was for eight slivers (sixpence
English) a day; and, after a month of unsuccessful attempts, he at last
caught a female bird.

It cost him two more months to catch a male bird; he then shut them up
together, and having about the beginning of the year 1673 obtained some
eggs from them, he released the female, which, leaving the male behind
to hatch the eggs in her stead, flew joyously to Dort, with the note
under her wing.

She returned in the evening. She had preserved the note.

Thus it went on for fifteen days, at first to the disappointment, and
then to the great grief, of Van Baerle.

On the sixteenth day, at last, she came back without it.

Van Baerle had addressed it to his nurse, the old Frisian woman; and
implored any charitable soul who might find it to convey it to her as
safely and as speedily as possible.

In this letter there was a little note enclosed for Rosa.

Van Baerle's nurse had received the letter in the following way.

Leaving Dort, Mynheer Isaac Boxtel had abandoned, not only his house,
his servants, his observatory, and his telescope, but also his pigeons.

The servant, having been left without wages, first lived on his little
savings, and then on his master's pigeons.

Seeing this, the pigeons emigrated from the roof of Isaac Boxtel to that
of Cornelius van Baerle.

The nurse was a kind-hearted woman, who could not live without something
to love. She conceived an affection for the pigeons which had thrown
themselves on her hospitality; and when Boxtel's servant reclaimed them
with culinary intentions, having eaten the first fifteen already, and
now wishing to eat the other fifteen, she offered to buy them f