“Did not he offer to you tulip bulbs by hundreds?”
“Indeed he did.”
“Accept two or three, and, along with them, you may grow the third sucker.”
“Yes, that would do very well,” said Cornelius, knitting his brow; “if your father were alone, but there is that Master Jacob, who watches all our ways.”
“Well, that is true; but only think! you are depriving yourself, as I can easily see, of a very great pleasure.”
She pronounced these words with a smile, which was not altogether without a tinge of irony.
Cornelius reflected for a moment; he evidently was struggling against some vehement desire.
“No!” he cried at last, with the stoicism of a Roman of old, “it would be a weakness, it would be a folly, it would be a meanness! If I thus give up the only and last resource which we possess to the uncertain chances of the bad passions of anger and envy, I should never deserve to be forgiven. No, Rosa, no; to-morrow we shall come to a conclusion as to the spot to be chosen for your tulip; you will plant it according to my instructions; and as to the third sucker,”—Cornelius here heaved a deep sigh,—“watch over it as a miser over his first or last piece of gold; as the mother over her child; as the wounded over the last drop of blood in his veins; watch over it, Rosa! Some voice within me tells me that it will be our saving, that it will be a source of good to us.”
“Be easy, Mynheer Cornelius,” said Rosa, with a sweet mixture of melancholy and gravity, “be easy; your wishes are commands to me.”
“And even,” continued Van Baerle, warming more and more with his subject, “if you should perceive that your steps are watched, and that your speech has excited the suspicion of your father and of that detestable Master Jacob,—well, Rosa, don’t hesitate for one moment to sacrifice me, who am only still living through you,—me, who have no one in the world but you; sacrifice me,—don’t come to see me any more.”