ore successful under the name of Jacob than under
that of Isaac, gain the friendship of Gryphus, which for several months
he cultivated by means of the best Genievre ever distilled from the
Texel to Antwerp, and he lulled the suspicion of the jealous turnkey
by holding out to him the flattering prospect of his designing to marry
Rosa.
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 first he had also made some way with Rosa; not, indeed, in her
affections, but inasmuch as, by talking to her of marriage and of love,
he had evaded all the suspicions which he might otherwise have excited.
We have seen how his imprudence in following Rosa into the garden had
unmasked him in the eyes of the young damsel, and how the instinctive
fears of Cornelius had put the two lovers on their guard against him.
The reader will remember that the first cause of uneasiness was given to
the prisoner by the rage of Jacob when Gryphus crushed the first bulb.
In that moment Boxtel's exasperation was the more fierce, as, though
suspecting that Cornelius possessed a second bulb, he by no means felt
sure of it.
From that moment he began to dodge the steps of Rosa, not only following
her to the garden, but also to the lobbies.
Only as this time he followed her in the night, and bare-footed, he was
neither seen nor heard except once, when Rosa thought she saw something
like a shadow on the staircase.
Her discovery, however, was made too late, as Boxtel had heard from the
mouth of the prisoner himself that a second bulb existed.
Taken in by the stratagem of Rosa, who had feigned to put it in the
ground, and entertaining no doubt that this little farce had been played
in order to force him to betray himself, he redoubled his precaution,
and employed every means suggested by his crafty nature to watch the
others without being watched himself.
He saw Rosa conveying a large flower-pot of white earthenware from her
father's kitchen to her bedroom. He saw Rosa washing in pails of water
her pretty little hands, begrimed as they were with the mould which she
had handled, to give her tulip the best soil possible.
And at last he hired, just opposite Rosa's w
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