The lady would visit her tulip beds early every morning, to see them in bud; and again late in the afternoon, to see the full-blown flowers. At such times I never got a glimpse of her face; for she always wore a huge cap, from which only the tip of her nose protruded.
But I decided, after I had been on the estate a week, that the fair owner must be young, for when she addressed a remark to me, which she did occasionally, her voice was so low—as if she feared I might hear what she said.
To judge by the enormous quantities of bulbs she sent to market, the widow must have been very rich; but the bulbs were not her only treasures. She possessed a collection of shells, fresh, and salt-water, that represented a very tidy sum of money.
In Holland, as well as in England, and France, the shell had also a commercial value; and wealthy collectors vied with one another to secure the finest examples of the spordilus regius; the "sun-ray" mussel; the rainbow-hued "venus-ear"; the "queen's cap"; the "tower of Babylon"; and "Pharaoh's turban," and would pay as high as two hundred dollars for a perfect specimen of the shell they wanted. I have known a perfect scalaria preciosa to bring one hundred zequins. This shell is more valuable than the pearl; and my fair employer possessed a whole drawerful of them. Her sainted husband had collected them; and they would have sold for more than would a three-master loaded with grain.
More than one nabob had offered fabulous sums for the collection; and it was said that a British peer, who was devoted to the study of conchology, had even gone so far as to offer his hand and title to the widow, in order to gain possession of the much coveted treasure.
The widow who hesitates loses a title; while the lady was considering the peer's offer, there was a sudden fall in the price of shells, and my lord sailed away to England.
What caused this depression in the shell-market you ask?
Well, as your highness, and the honorable gentlemen, must know, every sea-creature like the scalaria builds its house with the volutions turning to the left.
One day a sailor, whose home was in Nimeguen, returned from a voyage to Sumatra, and brought with him a large number of scalaria with the shells turned in just the opposite direction—from left to right. Now, a shell of this order was a decided lusus naturæ, and the price for the ordinary pattern at once depreciated. The bankers and nabobs, who had formerly vied with one another in their quest for the scalaria preciosa, were now so inflamed with the desire to possess a scalaria retrotorsa, that they willingly paid from two to three thousand thalers for a single specimen. On the other hand, the ordinary scalaria, which had sold readily for one hundred ducats, could now be bought for ten, and fifteen thalers.
This was a heavy blow for my widowed employer, and she soon found that she had not the strength to bear it alone.